It’s done.
At yet another packed, raucous board meeting on Thursday night, Grossmont Union High School District Trustees voted to approve the layoffs that have for months roiled the community.
District officials have argued the layoffs were necessary to ensure the long-term fiscal health of the district, which is projecting a multi-million-dollar deficit over three years.
Reading from a statement sent to the community earlier in the day, Interim Superintendent Sandra Huezo said, “Adopting these resolutions will help address real, long- term structural issues, including projected structural deficits, warnings from the state of future budget shortfalls and the fact that we have over 200 more full time equivalent positions than in 2017-2018, even as enrollment has declined.”
Community members on the other hand have forcefully, and emotionally, pushed back against the plan, arguing that the scale of the cuts don’t match the deficit and that the district could turn to its sizable reserves to make up the difference.
“I think it’s been established that there are other motives than saving money, and I think it’s only fair to ask, what is that? What is the vision? What’s the direction? I’m on the board and I don’t know what it is,” Trustee Chris Fite said during the meeting.
A four-seat majority of Grossmont’s board has made no secret of its support of the layoff plan, so attendees knew which way the wind was blowing. Thursday was a last-ditch effort to change the board’s mind.
The scene in front of Grossmont High School’s theater before the vote was closer to a carnival than the lead up to a school board meeting. A dozen students from Grossmont High School’s dance team performed choreographed dances as speakers blared music. Hundreds of community members packed the space in front of the theater.
There was a nervous energy, even to the dancing. For the students on Grossmont’s team, the cuts were personal – their dance teacher Caryn Ipapo-Glass was one of the staff members slated to get a pink slip. The handful that spoke during public comment made as much clear.
“It’s like a funeral right now in the arts program,” Grossmont High sophomore Toby Mishler said.
Fite, consistently the board’s lone holdout on the move, tried to amend the layoffs out of the layoff resolutions, at one point inquiring if student Trustee Maggie Kelly was allowed to second his motion. Maggie Kelly, similarly, requested to cast a preferential vote on the issue. Both attempts were shot down.
Ultimately, the board approved the elimination by a four-to-one vote to a soundtrack of jeers, boos and pledges to recall members. The 61 positions impacted include teachers, counselors and librarians.
The decision seemed to let all of the anxious air out of the room. As the board called a 30-minute recess, many of the hundreds of attendees filed out of the theater, leaving only a few dozen community members, staff and students scattered about.
Maggie Kelly walked to the front of the stage and embraced a group of friends, her face bright red and streaked with tears. After returning to the podium for a moment, she stood up and walked out, boycotting the rest of the meeting.
Hobbs’ New Settlement
By 10 p.m., much of the crowd that attended the meeting had left. It was then the board announced they’d be retreating to a closed session. They didn’t return for about 40 minutes.
When the meeting was gaveled back into session, only Fite and Board President Gary Woods returned to the stage. Woods, haltingly, announced that in closed session the board had unanimously approved a settlement agreement.
The agreement stipulated that a district employee would resign as of June 30 and receive one year of severance, totaling $186,500. The agenda item didn’t, however, clarify who the settlement was for. But Jerry Hobbs, Grossmont’s chief of staff, whose return to the district has raised eyebrows and sparked concerns of a conflict of interest, did.
It was for him.
The day before the vote, Voice published a piece exploring Hobbs’ windy road back to the district. In 2018, Hobbs resigned from his position as a special education teacher at Grossmont while under investigation, though the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing ultimately closed its investigation into him without disciplining him.
Years later, Hobbs found work as a paralegal at the firm JW Howard Attorneys, which was subsequently hired by the district to conduct an internal investigation into his former boss at Grossmont who launched the 2018 investigation into him. Hobbs worked as a researcher on this investigation.
That investigation concluded that his former supervisor had engaged in retaliation against two dozen district employees, including Hobbs. So, the firm assigned Hobbs to craft a settlement that would clear his name and, importantly, allow him to be rehired at Grossmont.
That’s exactly what he did, and in December, the board approved the settlement. The next month, the district hired him in an administrative role. He was promoted to chief of staff a month later.
But in a leaked memo obtained by Voice, an attorney at the law firm suggested he deceptively altered that settlement without their knowledge, adding a stipulation that he receive tenure if the district rehired him. That language, the memo argues, may actually be illegal. Hobbs has strenuously denied that allegation, saying it was his understanding everyone had seen the addition.
The latest settlement, which Hobbs said was authored by the district and not him, nullified that tenure stipulation. Hobbs also said he’d signed the agreement.
In a text message, he wrote of the settlement, “There were no job performance issues at all. Absolutely NO allegations of misconduct. The position was distracting from the core mission of the district. The separation was amicable and fair.”
