Fights and failure at Sonoma School District 

As a parent of three kids in Sonoma Valley schools, I’ve watched in horror as the school district’s leadership is consumed with infighting, while principals, teachers, staff, and kids desperately need their support to make it through this interminable pandemic. The much publicized drama centers around accusations made by, and made against, School Board Trustee John Kelly. 

The accusations made against Mr. Kelly are many, covering terrain that includes everything from failure to play well with others to serious personal failings and professional misconduct (that if true would make him unfit for the office he holds) to crimes that if proven could land him in prison. 

The accusations made by Mr. Kelly against several of his many adversaries focus on an alleged conspiracy by district leadership to blame the district’s failings on an outspoken group of special education parents. It is a tangled steaming mess, and the kids are shouted past.

A few things seem clear to me, and are agreed upon by everyone I’ve spoken to. 

1. The longer district leadership is caught in this fight, the less they are doing for the kids, 
2. An extraordinary range of community members accuse Mr. Kelly of an impressive menagerie of failings,
3. There really are long-standing failures by the district on special education and on relations with the (understandably stressed and angry) special education parent advocates, 
4. These advocates support Mr. Kelly only because they see him as the sole member of district leadership on their side,
5. No one but Mr. Kelly attests to having witnessed the alleged conspiratorial meeting he says he was included in, and,
6. Mr. Kelly and the special education advocates have requested that the county district attorney investigate that meeting as a Brown Act violation. 

Neither side expects that any of the combatants will resign, nor that the district’s difficulties with administering special education will simply fade away. However, there are two challenging things that other district leaders can do to speed a return to focussing on education. 

First, Herculean effort to show the special education parents that someone in the district other than Mr. Kelly is working on their behalf. That relationship is truly broken, and mending relationships takes dedication, hard to achieve with rapid administrator turnover. The district will have to change how it deals with special education families, and retain leadership, and admit to and fix ongoing failures. No small ask. 

Second, since they see the Brown Act allegation as a bluff, call Mr. Kelly’s bluff. Ask the DA to investigate, including their accusations against Mr. Kelly and his Brown Act accusation against them. Let an investigator not working for either side find the facts. Again not an easy thing, but whatever it takes to return the focus to educating kids and supporting staff is necessary.

— Dan Levitis, Boyes Hot Springs