Source: San Diego News Network
It was during my just concluded 10-day vacation in Washington, D.C., visiting all the historic sites and the exquisite cherry blossom trees (by chance, we caught them blooming during the three days each year when their breathtaking floral beauty is at its peak), that the Del Mar Union School District exploded into the news. But unlike the blossoms, this explosion is hardly of the beauteous kind.
For months I’ve been asking and waiting and asking again, to see when and if the deed will get done, only to learn that the board took action and released former superintendent Sharon McClain while I was away.
I’ve covered the Del Mar Union School District closely for the past 15 years, and have witnessed the rise, and fall, of former superintendents Rob Harriman and Tom Bishop. Both men reigned supreme until they were both dismissed by their school boards under clouds of suspicion, the reasons for which were never formally revealed. And now we have the demise of a third.
The reports so far on this latest firing have offered readers an infuriatingly limited presentation of the problems confronting the DM district.
I would ask all those who are following this drawn-out saga to suspend judgment until all the facts, those facts that professional journalists should have reported but failed to extract, can be revealed.
Depressingly, the reports to date reflect a hell-bent, torches and pitchforks mission that does little to provide people with accuracy and balance. I plead for patience because everything I’ve read so far has served only to increase hysteria.
During these last few days of spring break, can we have patience? Can folks hold off on condemning this board until more facts have been exposed?
Can we use common sense and ask ourselves why the board would proceed with firing McClain if it were not evident – not unanimously evident – that there have been legal violations?
Can we ask ourselves why board president Comischell Rodriguez, after months of apparent agreement, would suddenly decide at the last board meeting to switch her position and vote against the board majority? Is this an act of integrity, to suddenly flip-flop and play to the political arena? Or was there some new evidence revealed that only she was privy to?
Can we ask why Steven McDowell inexplicably abstained? What’s up with that? Cowardly? Or something borne of conviction?
Do Rodriguez’s and McDowell’s actions now put the board at greater risk for litigation? A unanimous decision to vote her out is quite different than a 3-1-1 vote. By flopping and flipping and crumbling to please the crowd, without regard to the law, is McClain’s case strengthened?
Can we ask why one of the most highly regarded education attorneys in San Diego, Dan Shinoff, feels confident that McClain violated her contract, and perhaps the Brown Act and other breaches as well? Does it make sense that the board would, on a whim, do this without solid legal grounds?
And why is one speaker’s offhand comment that this action could cost the district $500,000 repeated in the press as if it were an accepted fact? How often, if ever, was it pointed out that not a dime would be spent if McClain was released for cause? Five will get you ten that that $500,000 pulled-from-the-air figure will grow to $800,000 or even $1 million before the month is out.
Questions to ponder.
Meanwhile, I’m going to reflect on the memory of that one last look at the carpet of cherry blossoms falling off the trees like so much drifting, snowy confetti – grateful for the few days of respite, ironically taken in our nation’s capital, from the political turmoil of a tiny school district three thousand miles away.
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