Sonoma school board vows inquiry into opaque 2020 PLA meeting

The Sonoma Valley Unified School District is launching an independent investigation into a May 17 letter of complaint sent to the district by former Superintendent Chuck Young.

School board president Melanie Blake announced that the board had voted to initiate the investigation during a closed-session meeting between trustees prior to the board’s June 8 public meeting.

Young, who was interim district superintendent in the 2017-2018 school year, sent a letter to district officials in May regarding “procedural irregularities and potential failure to disclose conflicts of interest by certain current or former board members.”

In the letter, Young said he was writing “on behalf of a group of Sonomans who are concerned about the process and substance of the board's decision on a project labor agreement.”

The project labor agreement, or PLA, Young references was previously approved by trustees on Nov. 17, 2020. That agreement with the North Bay Building and Construction Trades Council and its local unions stated that the district would only contract with businesses that employ union construction workers. The agreement was later rescinded by trustees in a closed-session meeting on May 18, 2021; district officials did not give a reason for pulling out of the agreement.

In his complaint, Young detailed a litany of alleged irregularities which served as background to the PLA vote last November.

Young noted that two of the voting trustees were “lame duck” members set to leave the board “within days”; that then-Superintendent Socorro Shiels had been unexpectedly fired by district trustees without explanation minutes before the PLA vote; and that the PLA was introduced for the first time on the consent agenda with little or no vetting on the issue by a majority of trustees, members of district staff or members of the community.

The consent calendar is typically reserved for routine matters on the meeting agenda that have already been considered by the board and expected to be approved without further discussion. Typically, the board president and the district superintendent formulate the agendas for the school board meetings. Trustee John Kelly and Socorro Shiels were president and superintendent, respectively, at the time ‒ up until Shiels’ unexpected dismissal prior to the meeting.

In the complaint, Young focuses on what he alleges was an attempt “to move this (PLA) item through without notice or objection” by placing it on the consent agenda.

“One must wonder why Mr. Kelly was so devoted to the unsuccessful attempt to have this 10-year contract approved without notice,” Young writes in the letter, noting that in his failed 2018 campaign for the Sonoma Valley seat on the Santa Rosa Junior College Board of Trustees, Kelly reported $16,200 in campaign contributions from North Bay labor unions.

In the letter, Young called for an investigation into any potential “conflicts of interest” or “impropriety” in Kelly’s actions on the PLA.

Among the more than a dozen points of investigation Young calls for in the letter, the first three are:

• to determine if Socorro Shiels was terminated abruptly because of her views on the PLA, or because she objected to the deviation from board bylaws regarding the agenda item;

• to know what communications Kelly had with signatories to the agreement from 2017 through the present;

• to determine if there was a quid-pro-quo situation for Kelly and former Trustee Britta Johnson, both of whom had received campaign donations in prior elections from North Bay labor groups.

“The failure to clear this up and determine if the contract was procured through misfeasance or malfeasance will haunt the district and further damage the community’s perception of the governance and management teams,” said Young.

Kelly has declined repeated requests for comment from the Index-Tribune regarding the PLA, its Nov. 17, 2020 placement on the consent calendar and Young’s May 17 letter to the district.

In response to Index-Tribune questions about who will conduct the investigation, and under what parameters, timeline and cost it will take place, SVUSD Associate Superintendent Bruce Abbott said the district has no comment.

Following the June 8 school board meeting, Young said he was pleased district officials are undertaking an investigation that he “and many others believe is necessary to re-establish public trust in their governance of our schools.”

“The Board must follow through to see that the investigation is thorough, independent, provides full-public results, and is followed by appropriate action by the Board,” said Young. “We will be watching that process unfold.”

Contact Kate Williams at kate.williams@sonomanews.com.