In a 4-1 vote on Thursday evening, the Grossmont Union High School District board moved to terminate the positions of all librarians as well as dozens of other staff.
Announcing the vote approximately 24 hours before it was set to take place, GUHSD held a special governing meeting Thursday afternoon. The first item on the action agenda was to adopt a resolution “terminating services of certificated employees as a result of reduction or discontinuation of a particular kind of service.”
Suzanne Sannwald, a librarian at West Hills High, said that she found out the fate of her job would be in the board’s hands just two days before the vote.
“We didn’t find out that we were on the cut list, and it wasn’t confirmed until Tuesday at noon when our principals found out in a meeting, came back to our school sites and told us,” Suzanne Sannwald, a librarian at West Hills High School since 2014, said.
The proposed resolution, now enacted, will result in the “reduction or elimination of 49.2 full-time-equivalent certificated administrative and/or teaching positions at the end of this school year.”
Employees will be notified by March 15 if their position may be affected, Sandra Huezo, acting superintendent, said in an email to staff. Final notices will be issued by May 15 for any positions that will be eliminated.
Attendees were asked to watch the livestream from an overflow room at the GUHSD Feb. 27 Special Board Meeting (Photo by Tessa Balc/ Times of San Diego)“Save the librarians,” chanted teachers, students, staff, and community members of GUHSD as the board took their seats in front of a crowd nearing 600, overflowing out of El Cajon Valley High School‘s multipurpose room.
In the last two years, the district has ended the school year with a budget surplus, according to financial documents on the district’s website, leaving community members and GUHSD employees wondering what the cuts are for.
“You’re cutting the librarians, you’re cutting tenured administrators, you’re cutting a ton of people. You have these special meetings to hire all these other people that cost even more money than the people you are replacing,” Matt Norris, a curriculum specialist with the district, said during public comments.
“So please have the spine to either do the right thing and not make these cuts to further gut our schools or at least have the fortitude and guts to at least say what your end game is.”
Some speakers who took the podium also criticized the district’s new $200,000 chief of staff position, which was approved by a 4-1 board vote at a Feb. 6 special meeting.
After forty minutes of public comment and a ten-minute recess — taken after board members accused the crowd of being disruptive — the board voted on the first item approving staff cuts. Thereafter, the session was moved behind closed doors to vote on the remaining three items.
The next two items passed without much discussion: to reduce or eliminate classified positions and to appoint the board president as the individual member authorized to confer with legal counsel. It was the final item, regarding termination of legal services from the JW Howard Attorneys law firm, that took the most time for deliberation. The Southern California-based firm is affiliated with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is now Secretary of Health and Human Services.
“As our board bylaws say, that when those subcommittees are done, they dissolve. His job was to present a report. Therefore, his contract should have been dissolved. Last year, the board voted to extend it, which shouldn’t have been extended,” said board member Chris Fite.
In January 2023, the board used a secret personnel investigation by the law firm as evidence to demote multiple administrators to classroom teaching positions.
Initially, board member Jim Kelly motioned to table the item; however, it was blocked with a 3-2 vote against putting off the decision, with Kelly and Scott Eckert voting in favor.
“So, I’m concerned partly because [Trustee Gary Woods] just read a very lengthy description of an excellent service [JW Howard] did. I have constituents that are communicating, what’s going on here with this, because they saw the investigation’s fruits and really questioning why would we let go of Mr. Howard’s service,” Eckert said. “In my look at this, to say we are going to terminate your service after reading that, it’s a little incongruent.”
In the end, the board voted 3-2 in favor of terminating services with the firm.
Following the meeting, board members declined to speak to the press.
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