Trustees of the Grossmont Union High School District board have been regularly discussing district business and planning board decisions in private text and email conversations, their messages show.
In private messages obtained by The San Diego Union-Tribune via public records request, a select group of trustees and their advisers arranged for allies to be named to key positions and plotted against s they believed disloyal.
This inner circle was led largely by a man named Jerry Hobbs, a former Grossmont teacher who was disciplined seven years ago for allegedly making dozens of offensive comments to students and staff.
Since at least the spring of last year, trustees relied on Hobbs — who was not a district employee at the time — for intel, advice and directions to help guide their decision-making in matters of district business, including budget planning, curriculum, union relations and hiring, records show.
“The amazing changes that we were able to accomplish had absolutely no chance without you!” Jim Kelly, a Grossmont trustee for 22 years, told Hobbs in a May 2024 email about his help in reasg teachers. “Thank you so much for all your advice and counsel to help us so much!”
Hobbs gave trustees instructions on what to do and say, drafting directives for them to send to the superintendent and other employees. He pushed the board to aim budget cuts at school librarians, saying he thought they were “anti-Board” and wasting district money on “woke” books.
Hobbs also advised the naming of trustees’ allies to positions — including himself.
Hobbs instructed the board president on how to hire him as their chief of staff, a $187,000-a-year job, and said he would write the job description. The board gave him the job in February.
‘These kinds of actions erode trust’
Government ethics and transparency experts said the trustees’ texts and emails raise questions as to whether they are acting in the public’s best interest — and how much board business they are conducting behind closed doors.
“These kinds of actions erode trust in the school board,” said John Pelissero, government ethics director at Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. “That undermines their legitimacy in making policy for the school district.”
The messages also raise questions of whether Grossmont trustees violated California open meetings laws.
The Brown Act prohibits serial meetings, or discussions among a majority of trustees outside of a properly noticed public board meeting.
Serial meetings can take place in person or virtually, such as via text messages and emails. But they can also occur when two trustees talk with each other about a topic, then one of the trustees continues the conversation with a third trustee, eventually comprising a majority.
Most of the messages provided to the Union-Tribune include one or two board , not a majority of three or more; Grossmont has five board total.
But at least one group chat did include a board majority. And it’s unclear whether virtual conversations involving one or two trustees eventually included more later in person, or in other unreleased messages.
Some of the group chats also don’t indicate everyone who was included.
The Union-Tribune submitted a public record request to the school district for text messages and emails exchanged between board and Hobbs, and trustees were responsible for producing responsive records from their phones and email s. Some trustees provided incomplete records, with group chats missing messages or with dates, times and senders for some messages omitted.
Whether or not they broke the letter of the law, trustees should not be having such private conversations, said David Loy, legal director of the First Amendment Coalition.
“The whole point of being elected to serve the public is to be transparent,” Loy said.
In an email Thursday, Grossmont school board President Gary Woods, a 10-year veteran of the board, said he had not seen the records and assigned responsibility for the situation to John Howard, an outside attorney the board hired more than two years ago.
Woods said Howard highly recommended Hobbs. He also said Howard “had led the Governing Board to believe that the Board was in compliance with the Brown Act. This is why Mr. Howard was involved in discussions as District counsel.”
Howard said in an email that Woods was wrong and he was never hired to ensure the board was complying with the Brown Act, since he has no expertise in the subject.
The board severed ties with Howard’s firm in February. Woods said he initiated that decision for financial reasons.
In December, when then-Superintendent Mike Fowler announced he had brain cancer, Woods said one of his first priorities as board president was to hire someone to “maintain momentum, increase efficiency and reduce costs” and investigate allegations of retaliation against teachers by s.
Howard said he did highly recommend Hobbs, who was then working for him as a paralegal, as he seemed to have expertise in education culture, rules and policies. But it wasn’t until after Hobbs left his firm for Grossmont “that I developed reservations that led me to conclude that the recommendation had been a mistake, a conclusion Woods vigorously chose to ignore,” Howard said.
Hobbs, who is no longer with the district, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
An inner circle
Hobbs first resigned from the district in 2018 as it was about to fire him for dozens of inappropriate comments it said he made as a teacher at REACH Academy. He denied the allegations, saying his words had been twisted.
Hobbs quietly returned to the Grossmont scene about two years ago as a paralegal for Howard, an attorney and close friend of Kelly whose law firm the board had contracted in late 2022.
The board hired Howard to conduct a confidential personnel investigation. Hobbs helped conduct that probe, which concluded that he and other employees had been retaliated against by the district’s special education director; as a result, the board demoted four s.
The board kept Howard’s services for two more years, months after that investigation ended.
From 2023 to 2024, Grossmont paid Howard’s firm $733,000, according to the district’s quarterly reports on legal fees. Grossmont paid $200 an hour for Hobbs’ paralegal work, per the firm’s contract with the district.
Messages show Hobbs and Howard eventually helped trustees with far more than the personnel probe.
Hobbs positioned himself as a strategist for an inner circle that primarily included Kelly, Woods, human resources director and former teachers union vice president Jessica Merschtina and ELITE Academy teacher Coleen Topper, now a teachers union executive board member. Emails show Hobbs also advised trustees Scott Eckert and Rob Shield.
Chris Fite, the only trustee backed by the teachers union and the only one to vote against hiring Hobbs, was not included in any of the text messages obtained by the Union-Tribune. He said Thursday he didn’t know his fellow trustees had been talking with Hobbs months before they hired him, and he found the records alarming.
“It’s bad,” Fite said. “It seems to confirm many people’s suspicion that he was brought in to spy on people.”
Kelly, Shield, Eckert, Merschtina and Topper did not respond to requests for comment.
‘Overarching goal: RIF RIF RIF!!!’
of the text groups deliberately kept their conversations from the superintendent, employees and other trustees.
“This thread is limited only to John, Jim, Jerry, and Gary. We need to develop a texting protocol ASAP,” Woods said in one January text message.
Their messages portray an insular political circle of select board trustees and s that fought to maintain control of the district by strategizing against people — in particular, the district’s teachers union — they consider opponents, using language that suggests a war-like struggle for power.
“They attacked the character of our Board candidates and Trustees,” Hobbs wrote in one group chat in January. “I will never forget or forgive them for such intentional acts.” It’s unclear who Hobbs was talking about.
of the group also suggested s prove their loyalty.
For example, in a group chat with Hobbs and an unidentified trustee about deciding an ethnic studies curriculum, Woods proposed: “What about asking staff to propose our new option plus a section on Chaldean culture? Or to propose 2 curriculums and give the board a choice? This would provide Paul D. and Jay Geaer the opportunity to be loyal. Or would this provide time for the opposition to mobilize?” Paul Dautremont is Grossmont’s assistant superintendent for educational services.
In another undated series of messages, Woods proposed freezing all library funding, “micromanaging” all library purchases and purchasing the conservative Hillsdale College curriculum and Liberty University home-schooling curriculum, which is Bible-based. On Woods’ suggestion, Grossmont is now reviewing a different ethnic studies curriculum from Independent Institute for possible adoption.
Hobbs appeared to encourage trustees to seek revenge on perceived opponents.
In August, Hobbs gave Shield and Howard a “confidential recap” of a teachers union executive board meeting. Hobbs said two union board were talking trash about Shield and the board, and he suggested that Shield tell the superintendent to have their extra-duty assignments be revoked; it’s unclear if they were.
In one text message, Hobbs cheered for layoffs and suggested sidelining certain s, such as by putting the district’s human resources assistant superintendent, Bobbi Burkett, “in her place with extremely clear constraints.”
Hobbs said he also wanted to “deal with Collin” — Collin McGlashen, the district’s communications director — “once and for all. Overarching goal: RIF RIF RIF!!!” RIF refers to a reduction in force — layoffs.
An unidentified trustee, as well as Woods, replied to Hobbs in agreement. “Let’s do it ASAP,” the unidentified trustee said.
A promotion for Merschtina
On multiple occasions, inner circle discussed appointments, a responsibility school boards typically leave to superintendents and their staff.
In July, Hobbs directed the promotion of Merschtina, a teacher at the time, to human resources director.
“I’m thinking today is the day we go in with the full court press on Rob re: Jessica’s appt to HR,” Hobbs emailed to Merschtina, Topper, Howard and Kelly. “I’m happy to prepare a document for Rob to send the Supt. directing (asking) him to place the appt of Jessica on the July 18, 2024 Agenda.”
Kelly later gave Hobbs the go-ahead, writing: “I have told (Shield) many times that the perfect time to do something like this is during the summer where, even if anyone of our opponents notices it, there is no way they could muster any kind of a significant protest to it. And, even if they did, who cares?!?!”
On July 18, the board made Merschtina HR director by a 3-2 vote, with Kelly, Woods and Shield voting yes.
Grossmont Superintendent Sandra Huezo, who wasn’t superintendent at the time, told the Union-Tribune it’s her understanding that the job had been posted and applicants interviewed — but Merschtina was not among them.
“Clearly, the communications within the record production provide other perspectives as to how the appointment may have come about,” Huezo said in an email.
Pelissero, the ethics expert, said it seems inappropriate that Hobbs, as an unelected person, was allowed to give so much advice to trustees and be so involved in board decision-making.
School boards can hire consultants to advise them — but at least consulting contracts are approved in public board meetings, Pelissero said. In this case, he noted, the board kept Hobbs’ role as a consultant secret.
A ‘sketchy’ hiring, sudden breakup
After months relying on Hobbs, board trustees rewarded him by allowing him to create a high-ranking job for himself — that of chief of staff.
“Once I am officially aboard, we can hold a Special Board Meeting to approve my new job description ‘Chief of Staff for the Governing Board,’” Hobbs wrote in a January email to Woods, Kelly and Howard. “We will need Diedrich to CONFIDENTIALLY vet it” — William Diedrich is an attorney for Grossmont — “and make suggestions. Then we need to move to approve and appoint like last time.”
The job was never posted, and the board did not interview other applicants. The board hired Hobbs first in January as a family engagement director, then as chief of staff in February.
The Union-Tribune previously reported that Howard had Hobbs draft a settlement that would exonerate Hobbs of his disciplinary history, clearing the way for his rehire. The board unanimously approved it in December.
If board let Hobbs direct his own hiring, that raises questions as to whether trustees were upholding their basic fiduciary duty of care, according to Scott Cummings, professor of legal ethics at UCLA School of Law. Public officials should conduct a proper candidate search and vet applicants for job positions, he said.
“If an inside candidate was allowed to create his own position and put it through the board without any vetting, that seems sketchy,” Cummings said.
Grossmont trustees’ honeymoon with Hobbs, however, turned out to be short.
A dispute involving Howard and Hobbs arose around April when Howard said he discovered Hobbs had included a provision in his settlement to grant himself immediate tenure upon being hired.
The board separated from Hobbs in May, about four months after hiring him, citing an undisclosed “controversy” with the district about his employment.
In exchange for Hobbs’ resignation and the agreement that he will never work for the district again, the board is paying him $187,000.
