"...In direct, face-to-face
conversation with CTA
Vice-President Dean Vogel and
CTA Board Member
Jim Groth,
on Friday, September 14, 2007, it
was made abundantly clear that
the SEA/CTA/NEA structure and
its nexus with Collective
Bargaining are in imminent
jeopardy with the Miller-Pelosi
NCLB Reauthorization proposal.
As a Union,we must speak
powerfully for our membership.
We do not accept a marginalized
role indetermining our salaries,
benefits, and retirement. We do
not accept a marginalized rolein
our own evaluation and
transfer..."
"Now, it is a time for action! The
Miller-Pelosi NCLB
Reauthorization proposal, should
it continue unabated and
uncorrected, may accomplish
what Schwarzenegger's plethora
of propositions, in November
2005, could not, specifically:
eviscerate Collective Bargaining
in California. To wit:
PRESIDENT'S REPORT:
SEA President's Report
September 17, 2007
An attachment is provided to
assist in conveying OUR
MESSAGE!
...

Sincerely,
Sam L. Lucero
President, SEA
Dear SEA Members,


... Your SEA Board of
Directors are: Sam Lucero (MVM,
Full-Time Release President),
Chuck Patterson
(ORH, Vice-President), Al
Ohlendorf (BVH, Treasurer), Rene
Flores (CVH, Secretary),
Alex Anguiano (HH, Past
President), John Ray (BTSA,
At-Large), John Orcutt (RDR, At-
Large), James Love (CVH,
At-Large), Kathy Dyga (MoM,
At-Large), Sandra Robinson
(SYH, At-Large), Marylen Haines
(PH, State Council), Jason
Leichter (CVA, State
Council), and Marijane Moon
(SuHI, State Council).
I don't understand why SEA
doesn't like the following three
ideas.  Great teachers
should
be paid much more than
mediocre or poor teachers.

The Miller-Pelosi bill will do the
following:

1) Restricts "merit“ to student test
scores, classroom observations,
and agreement to work in high-
need schools for four years.

2) Requires that —master
teachers“participate in
evaluations of teachers in
schools with a specific grant.
These master teachers now
performing supervisory function.

3) District would have to match
funds for these merit pay / "Pay
for Performance“ schemes. The
amount of money available for
across-the-board salary
increases or benefits increases is
subject to dramatic reduction.
“The systematic redacting
in over 1,000 pages of legal
bills of every single
description of the services
rendered can only reflect a
knee-jerk impulse for
secrecy,” Scheer said. “It
also underscores how
forgetful public officials are
that this information
belongs to the public.”

Garcia himself billed the district as
much as 15.3 hours in a day, and
$131,708 between July 1, 2005,
and the end of May. The district has
not yet produced June's invoices.

Garcia's legal meter starts running
hours before he sets foot in the
board room. In what Garcia terms
“portal-to-portal” billing, he begins
charging Sweetwater $200 an hour
for his time the minute he leaves Los
Angeles for a 2 ½-hour commute to
Chula Vista...

...Board President Greg
Sandoval said he believes
Garcia can use drive time to
talk with Sweetwater staff
by phone. But when asked
why the board doesn't use
a San Diego-based
attorney to save on the
$1,100-per-meeting cost,
he said, “I guess we're
going to have to review
that.”

...However, the Sweetwater school
board appears to have leaned more
heavily on attorneys than most other
local boards.

Garcia attends every Sweetwater
board meeting,
joined the
board for a series of
interviews with
superintendent candidates
during spring and sat in on
a Saturday exploratory
conversation with former
Chula Vista Elementary
Superintendent Libby Gil
that Sandoval avoided
calling a job interview...

But the third-, fourth-and fifth-
largest local districts – Poway
Unified, Chula Vista Elementary and
Vista Unified – only have an attorney
present at board meetings when a
particularly controversial issue is on
the agenda. The next-largest district,
Grossmont Union High, has an
attorney present at every board
meeting.

Garcia said he could not comment on
why he was at the superintendent
candidate interviews during spring
and why he's not attending this
week's interviews. Spokeswomen
for the Oceanside and Poway
districts said attorneys were not
present at their boards' interviews of
the candidates who now hold the
superintendent jobs.

Sandoval said Garcia sat in on
interviews with four Sweetwater
finalists so he could negotiate on the
spot with a candidate of the board's
choosing. On the day of a special
board meeting on March 2, Garcia
billed Sweetwater $3,060 for 15.3
hours of work...

In addition, Sweetwater was billed
for 9.1 hours of Garcia's time on the
day the board spoke with Gil, who
was never officially a candidate...

Garcia acknowledged that his time
on the superintendent search
probably helped boost Sweetwater's
legal bills above their average.
Billings to Burke, Williams &
Sorensen were nearly $800,000 this
year, Russo said.

That's up from $442,441 in 2003-04
and $102,760 in 2002-03.
CHULA VISTA – The Sweetwater
Union High School District busted
its legal budget halfway through
the fiscal year that ended June 30.

Sweetwater reports it spent more
than $1 million on legal services
for the year, 77 percent more than
in the past fiscal year, with some
expenses for June yet to be logged.

It's tough to tell why.

Through a public-records request,
The San Diego Union-Tribune got
invoices documenting the district's
legal bills, but the descriptions of
services rendered were redacted
by order of the district's general
counsel, Bonifacio Garcia, who is
based in Los Angeles...

That may be true in a few
instances, but most of the
information would not give away
any secrets, said Peter Scheer,
executive director of the California
First Amendment Coalition.

“The systematic redacting in over
1,000 pages of legal bills of every
single description of the services
rendered can only reflect a knee-
jerk impulse for secrecy,” Scheer
said. “It also underscores how
forgetful public officials are that
this information belongs to the
public.”

Months ago Garcia presented
district trustees with his findings
that Sweetwater's legal bills are in
line with those of similar-sized
districts in Northern California.

[Maura's note: What a clever idea!  
Ask Bonny to determine if he's paid
too much!]
Bonny Garcia has donated to the
election campaigns of trustees Jim
Cartmill, Arlie Ricasa and Sandoval.
Campaign finance records show
donations of $1,000 to Ricasa in
2001-02, $1,000 to Sandoval in
2002 and $975 to Cartmill in 2002.
Sweetwater attorney
Bonnie Garcia and his
erstwhile associates
at Williams Burke
Sorenson
Sweetwater racks up large, clouded
legal bill
Descriptions of services left off
released forms

By Chris Moran
SAN DIEGO UNIONTRIBUNE
July 22, 2006
What kind of administrators
control
ACSA?
Region 18 Chair is Ed Brand
Term expires July 2009  
Should former Sweetwater
superintendent
Ed Brand  
direct our SDCOE lawyers?

He is on the San Diego
County School Legal
Services Council until
2008!
Ed Brand,
Mary Anne
Weegar and
Sweetwater
UHSD
As demonstrated by the
Mary Anne Weegar case,
(also covered in
La
Prensa) and many other
cases handled by the
SDCOE JPA and legal
services, Ed Brand
contributes to, and helps
enforce, SDCOE's culture
of dishonesty and
secrecy.

Should superintendents
like Ed Brand be in a
position over SDCOE
lawyers, when they are
the very individuals for
whose wrongdoing
SDCOE must pay?

Isn't that putting the fox
in charge of the hen
house?  
The taxpayers have to
keep paying and paying,
while Ed Brand violates
the law.

Ed Brand directs SDCOE
lawyers to assist him and
other school district
leaders in illegal actions!
SEA is not as secretive as Chula
Vista Educators; it has a website
and freely and openly discusses
its plans.
District crossover
raises questions

Educators can
have dual roles on
boards

By Chris Moran
STAFF WRITER

August 4, 2007

SOUTH COUNTY – School
employees commonly
serve on the governing
boards of school districts
that don't employ them.
What makes a case in
South County different is
three administrators' dual
roles at
Southwestern
College and the
Sweetwater Union High
School District, because
they're in positions to vote
on each other's budgets
and salaries.

Greg Sandoval is interim
president of Southwestern
and a member of the
Sweetwater board. Arlie
Ricasa is director of
student activities at
Southwestern and is on
the Sweetwater board.
Jorge Dominguez is
director of the Educational
Technology Department at
Sweetwater and a member
of the Southwestern board.

The arrangement is legal.
Governance ethicists raise
questions about
appearances, though,
especially when the
crossover votes occur as
close together as they
have recently.
How close?

In May, Sandoval joined
the majority in a 3-2 vote
rejecting $500,000 for
Dominguez's department.

Sweetwater
Superintendent Jesus
Gandara said he was
shocked by the vote
because he considers
training educators in
technology essential to the
district's success.

Gandara brought the item
back for reconsideration in
June. Sandoval changed
his mind – and the
outcome of the vote. The
$500,000 was restored on
a 3-2 vote. Ricasa voted
for the funding both times.

Nine days after his
department's funding was
restored, Dominguez
joined a unanimous
college board in approving
raises for Sandoval,
Ricasa and 19 other
administrators. The
amount of the raise will be
calculated later based on
state funding.

When asked whether he
had considered
recusing himself from
the vote on the raises,
Dominguez said he
thought he had done
so.
It had been his intent
to recuse himself, he said,
but he may have
inadvertently cast a vote
because he was distracted
by a controversy at the
same meeting over
whether to extend a vice
president's contract and
whether to give that vice
president a raise that split
the board 3-2.

Dominguez said that if he
voted for Sandoval's raise,
“I will definitely look at
changing my vote on that.”

Robert Fellmeth, director
of the Center for Public
Interest and the University
of San Diego School of
Law, and Bob Stern,
president of the
independent, nonprofit
Center for Governmental
Studies in Los Angeles,
said Dominguez deserves
praise if he recuses
himself, even if it's after
the fact.

There's no inherent
conflict of interest in being
a board member one place
and an employee in
another, Fellmeth said.

“If anything, you're
probably more qualified
than most to sit on the
other board,” he said.

South County is replete
with examples.

Chula Vista school trustee
Bertha Lopez teaches at
an elementary school in
National City. Mountain
Empire Unified School
District Superintendent
Patrick Judd serves on the
Chula Vista school board.
Sweetwater trustee Pearl
Quiñones works for the
San Ysidro School District.
South Bay Union School
District board President
Althea Jones works for the
San Diego Unified School
District.

But the Southwestern-
Sweetwater overlap
creates an appearance of
possible conflict, Stern
said.

“You can't have two
masters, so the question
is, 'Where is your loyalty?'
” he said. “I really think that
they need to re-evaluate
whether they should be on
each other's boards.”

Sandoval said he saw no
conflict of interest in his
two votes on funding for
Dominguez's department.
Sandoval said he votes on
recommendations that
come from the Sweetwater
superintendent, not from
Dominguez. Gandara
made a better case for the
funding and provided more
specifics the second time
around, Sandoval said.

He said he's conscientious
about consulting with
Sweetwater's attorneys to
steer clear of improper
votes. He said, however,
that he may have to go
one step further and seek
legal counsel on how to
avoid even appearances
of impropriety.

Dominguez and Sandoval
both denied making any
deal to swap votes. The
two must regularly
communicate about
Southwestern College
issues, but both said they
haven't discussed
Sandoval's Sweetwater
votes.

The biggest problem of
appearance with
overlapping jurisdictions is
the potential for a deal for
personal gain, Fellmeth
said...


Chris Moran: (619) 498-
6637; chris.
moran@uniontrib.com
Sweetwater Union High School District (SUHSD)
Sweetwater Union High School
District
Sweetwater
Education
Association
Griego
endorsement
puzzles some

Re: "Davis and Griego/Their
experience can improve Chula
Vista," (Editorial, Feb. 25):

I am so disappointed that the
Union-Tribune would support a
candidate like Bob Griego for Chula
Vista City Council, considering what
you already know about him.

I worked with Griego at the Otay
Water District and can tell you first
hand he had plenty to do with the
problems there. He was not, as your
paper suggests, part of the solution;
he was part of the problem and
continues to be part of the problem.
Griego was the general manager
who secretly hired Bonafacio
"Bonny" Garcia as legal counsel
when the district already had
in-house legal counsel.

It was not a coincidence that Garcia
is also the legal counsel for
Sweetwater Union High School
District, on whose board Griego
sits, and an associate of Jaime
Bonilla, who bought a seat on the
Otay board. Since December 2000,
Bonny Garcia has charged the
district almost $1 million for legal
expenses. In-house legal counsel
salary was $130,000 a year.

As far as Griego's story that he quit
and only came back after the board
promised to behave, the facts are
that Griego did quit, but immediately
became a "consultant" collecting his
$145,000 a year salary. When he
did come back, he received a
$25,000 raise and a district
automobile. No one at the district
can tell me what he did as a
"consultant."

Griego was quoted in a
Union-Tribune article when he quit
saying he was doing so because he
did not want to have a conflict of
interest while running for the City
Council seat. Suddenly, that conflict
of interest is not a concern to him.

Under Griego's management at
Otay, public information and
reports have been selectively
withheld from some board
members,
contracts have been
awarded through improper
procedures and the district's
environmental program ceased to
exist, prompting a warning from the
state Department of Fish and Game.

There must be a reason why two
Chula Vista City Council members,
the mayor, law enforcement,
firefighters, the city employees'
union and La Prensa are opposed
to Bob Griego. Experience is a good
thing, but not the kind Griego has.

DONNA BARTLETT-MAY
Spring Valley

Before electing Bob Griego, Chula
Vista voters should remember the
scandal ending his employment as
deputy chief administrative officer for
San Diego County.

To refresh your memory and quote
the Union-Tribune from a July 2000
article: "Griego's departure came
not long after an audit showed he
had used county staff, time and
equipment to do business for the
Sweetwater High School District,
where he has been a board
member for eight years. The audit
also showed he had attended 173
school-related meetings on
workdays in a two-year period."

Nothing has changed in the way he
does business as general manager
of the Otay Water District. Chula
Vista residents can expect that if
Griego is elected, he will continue
his past practices and misuse city
staff and abuse city hiring policies to
achieve his political goals, while
dispensing jobs and other favors to
those who he perceives to be his
loyal supporters.
JAMES CLEMENTS
El Cajon

You state that as a 12-year member
of the Sweetwater Union High
School District governing board,
Griego gets "high marks from some
of his colleagues." Now there's a
lofty testimonial. Why not high
marks from all, or even most, of
them?

Maybe because most of them
remember the SUHSD scandal in
1995 and the close call Griego
experienced in the resulting recall
election. That's probably good
experience to bring to Chula Vista
city government.

Griego says his position with the
Otay Water District, an agency the
city of Chula Vista wants to acquire,
should not present a problem for
him as a City Council member.
Huh? He also claims the turmoil at
the Otay Water District is not his
fault, and when its board members
got crazy, he quit and wouldn't return
until they calmed down. Is this a trait
the people of Chula Vista and the
Union-Tribune find attractive? What
will Griego do when things get a
little crazy around the council
chambers? Take his impressive
record of public service and go
home?

CHARLIE CASSENS
Lake Havasu City

The letter writers are former Otay
Water District employees.

http://www.watchourcities.4t.com/
Sweetwater USD
board member  
Greg Sandoval
resigns as VP of
Southwestern
College
Sandoval accused
of harassment

By Chris Moran
June 13, 2008

Southwestern College's
governing board has approved
the resignation of its vice
president for student affairs
after a sexual harassment
claim was filed against him.

Greg Sandoval, a career South
County college administrator,
submitted his resignation last
week, but this week he asked
college President Raj Chopra
to withdraw it, a college
spokeswoman said. Chopra
refused, the spokeswoman
said...

Trustee Jorge Dominguez voted
against approving the
resignation...
A student services employee ...
accused Sandoval of sexual
harassment in an
administrative claim filed with
the college.
The governing
board denied the claim
Wednesday night...

Dominguez, the lone vote
against Sandoval's
resignation, works for the
Sweetwater Union High School
District, where Sandoval is a
board member.

Their crisscrossing affiliations
put them in a position to vote on
matters benefiting each other,
and Dominguez pledged to
recuse himself from future
votes on Sandoval after being
asked about it by The San
Diego Union-Tribune last year.

A grand jury report released last
month made note of a
reciprocal relationship between
unnamed high school and
college trustees. Dominguez
confirmed at the time that the
report was referring to him. The
report praised the college
trustee for recusing himself
from further votes concerning
the high school trustee...

Agosto, the board president,
said he recused himself
because he has known
Sandoval since the 1970s. “My
vote would be biased,” Agosto
said.

Sandoval has been a vice
president at the college for five
years, and last year served
about 5½ months as the
college's interim president. He
has also served on the
Sweetwater school board since
1994.

Lopez's resignation was
unanimously approved by the
board Wednesday night. His
attorney did not return a call late
yesterday afternoon.
Chula Vista, California
SD Education Rpt Blog
[Sorry, the link to the San Diego
Union Tribune no longer works.  
Maybe Mr. Garcia pressured them to
hide the story.]

http://www.signonsandiego.com/n
ews/%20education/20060722-999
9-6m22legal.html
Link
(This link is now broken.)
SITE MAP
Lawsuit Against Chula
Vista Educators
and former President
Gina Boyd 2007
CTA Lawyers
Ann Smith
Fern Steiner
Bernhard Rohrbacher
Beverly Tucker
Michael D. Hersh
Michael D. Four
Glenn Rothner
Lawsuit Against CTA and
CVE (Donlan coverup)
More stories and commentary:

CVESD Reporter
(Jaime Mercado and Bertha Lopez)
2006 vote

Board Member;
Sweetwater Union High
School District

Seat 1
Jim Cartmill
39947 votes 61.48%
Lorenzo Provencio
25033 votes 38.52%


Seat 3
Greg R. Sandoval
38763 votes 60.03%
Archie McAllister
25815 votes 39.97%

[2008 update: Archie
McAllister is endorsed
by the Republican party
for CVESD board in
2008 in his race against
David Bejarano.  I'm a
Democrat, and I also
prefer McAllister.]


Seat 5
Arlie Ricasa
37990 votes 60.21%
Ed Herrera
25102 votes 39.79%
Shall GREG R.
SANDOVAL be recalled
(removed)  from Seat No.
3 of the Governing Board
for  Sweetwater Union
High School District?         
                   
                    
=====================
=====================
==                      
                      YES   
6,805     41.51      
NO   9,588     58.49      
                                         
                               To
succeed GREG R.
SANDOVAL should he be  
 recalled by this special
election.                            
    
                    
=====================
===================    
                      
                      BOB
WHITE                               
   5,780     59.33      
                      DONALD
M. SWANSON, SR.            
         
3,962     40.67      
                                         
                               Shall
ROBERT GRIEGO be
recalled (removed)  from
Seat No. 4 of the
Governing Board for         
Sweetwater Union High
School District?                 
           
                    
=====================
=====================
                       
                      YES    
7,229     43.73      
NO    9,303     56.27      
                                         
                              To
succeed ROBERT
GRIEGO should he be      
 recalled by this special
election.                            
    
                    
=====================
================          
                   
                      NORMAN
YAGGIE                             
 5,235     50.30      
                      ALYCE
ARNOLD                3,571  
   34.31      
                      DENNIS J.
McCARTHY      1,601     
15.38      
                                         
                                          
   
                                         
                                          
   
SWEETWATER
UNION HIGH
SCHOOL DISTRICT  
                               
 RECALL ELECTION
                               
 Tuesday, February
27, 1996

Shall STEVE HOGAN be
recalled (removed)       
from Seat No. 2 of the
Governing Board for       
Sweetwater Union High
School District?               
             

YES      7,195     45.59   
   
NO        8,587     54.41   
   

                     
To succeed STEVE
HOGAN should he be     
recalled by this special
election.                          
      

LARRY E.
CUNNINGHAM    
           
         3,250     32.06      
LORENZO PROVENCIO
3,227     31.84      
LITA DAVID                    
 2,519     24.85      
WALDRON SALLY
JANKE                        
1,140     11.25       

Statistics as of
August 2008

Year established: 1920

Enrollment: 42,662

Grades: 7-12

Superintendent:
Jesus M. Gandara

Address:
1130 Fifth Ave.,
Chula Vista
District picks firm to design new
school

By Chris Moran
STAFF WRITER

May 11, 2005

CHULA VISTA – The Sweetwater
Union High School District board
split on choosing an architect for
a 4,000-student school Monday
night, ultimately siding with
professional planners over two
board members who favored an
architect who bankrolls a political
action committee that supports
board incumbents.

The board voted 3-2 for Trittipo
Architecture and Planning, a firm
recommended by an architect
selection committee, the district's
chief operating officer and its
director of planning and
construction.

Board members Greg Sandoval
and Pearl Quiñones did their
own interviews of firms and
recommended Martinez + Cutri,
which has designed the last five
Sweetwater schools. The firm
has also directly and indirectly
contributed thousands of dollars
to four of the five board
members' campaign committees.
Initially, a six-person district
committee reviewed 10 firms and
identified four as finalists. Trittipo
was among them. Martinez +
Cutri was not. The committee
selected Trittipo as the top firm
in March.

At the April board meeting,
Sandoval said new presentations
were in order because firms had
been pitching a concept for a
creative and performing arts
school for seventh-through 12th-
graders in eastern Chula Vista.
District polling later indicated that
an arts school was not the
community's preference, and the
arts theme was dropped.

Martinez + Cutri was invited back
into the pool of candidates, and
a finalist firm dropped out.

In late April, the board's finance
and facilities subcommittee,
which consists of Sandoval and
Quiñones, interviewed and
scored the four firms. So did
Bruce Husson, Sweetwater's
chief operating officer, and Katy
Wright, the district's planning
director.

Sandoval ranked Martinez
highest. Quiñones ranked
Trittipo and Martinez equally.
Husson and Wright – who are
not board members and
therefore not subcommittee
members – both gave Trittipo the
highest marks. So the staff
recommendation stayed with
Trittipo, but the subcommittee
proposed the board hire
Martinez.

Martinez + Cutri directly
contributed $250 to Quiñones' re-
election campaign last year and
$750 to board member Arlie
Ricasa four years ago.

The firm also contributed about
$25,000 in cash and services to
the Bahia Del Sur political action
committee last year, as well as
$27,000 in 2002. Bahia Del Sur
in turn has donated to the
campaign committees of four
current board members in the
past three years: Quiñones
($10,000 last year), Ricasa
($9,000 in 2002), Sandoval
($10,000 in 2002) and Jim
Cartmill ($10,000 in 2002). Jaime
Mercado – who was elected to
the board in November – has
received no money from either
Martinez or Bahia Del Sur.

On Monday night, Cartmill,
Ricasa and Mercado voted for
Trittipo. Sandoval and Quiñones
voted for Martinez...
Castle Park High School
Dan Shinoff prolongs Title IX problems
Blog posts about SUHSD

Castle Park High School
Title IX problems

Former Supt. Ed Brand

Mary Anne Weegar

Bonny Garcia
Home

Why This Website

SDCOE

CVESD

Castle Park Elem

Law Enforcement

CTA

CVE

Stutz Artiano Shinoff

Silence is Golden

Schools and Violence

Office Admin Hearings

Larkins OAH Hearing
Coach James "Ted" Carter v.
Dianna Carberry
Dianna Carberry v. Jesus Gandara
Jesus Gandara on CVESD Reporter
School Construction
Firm Faces Fine for
Campaign Finance
Violations


The Seville Group Inc., which is one of
two companies jointly managing the
bond program for Sweetwater Union
High School District, is facing a
proposed $44,500 fine from the Fair
Political Practices Commission for
failing to file campaign statements and
contribution reports on time.

The late reports include several
contributions to campaigns for
Sweetwater school board members,
including Jim Cartmill, Pearl Quinones
and Greg Sandoval, and for the bond,
Proposition O., itself. Overall, Seville
Group faces 19 counts for late filings
over the past five years, some of which
happened more than three years after
the legal deadline.

The FPPC website does, however,
state that Seville Group did take steps
to remedy the problems, including
hiring a professional group to prepare
campaign statements, and reporting its
own violations to the FPPC. The
commission will decide whether to
approve the fine at a meeting next
Thursday.

Seville was chosen to manage the
Sweetwater bond program two years
ago in a process that proved
controversial with some members of
the last bond oversight committee.
Read more about that issue here.

-- EMILY ALPERT
September 3, 2009
Ranking High No Guarantee
of Winning Work in
Sweetwater

By EMILY ALPERT
Aug. 24, 2009 |

To decide which attorneys should help
advise Sweetwater Union High School
District on its $644 million construction
bond two years ago, employees and
outside experts interviewed four firms.
They ranked them on their experience,
their credentials and their fees.

Two of the four seemed unlikely to get
the job. Bowie, Arneson, Wiles &
Giannone was ranked third.
Garcia Calderon &
Ruiz, was ranked last.

Yet two months later, both were hired
over higher ranked firms. District staff
said Bowie had helped sit on the
committee that proposed the bond and
would charge less than the
competition. Garcia had "experience
and knowledge of the district." The
interview committee decided to
override its own rankings, Chief
Financial Officer Dianne Russo later
explained.

It had happened before. As
Sweetwater hired help to spend the
$644 million that Proposition O
authorized for school construction, the
district repeatedly ignored its own
rankings of consultants.

Superintendent Jesus Gandara
pushed for an architect that built
schools he liked, even though it
ranked lower than others. Sweetwater
chose a company to manage the
construction bond that wasn't initially
ranked first. Another company got
points in its ranking for being local, but
still rated lower than nine other firms.
School officials moved it to the top
anyway because it was a local
company. Their recommendations then
went to the school board for approval.

To gauge how closely rankings were
being followed, voiceofsandiego.org
reviewed the scores for five major
functions of the facilities bond.
Lower-ranked companies won work
four of the five times.

The rankings are compiled by
employees and outside experts
in facilities, finance or the law.
Firms are ranked on clear,
agreed criteria.
But getting the
highest ranking doesn't guarantee that
a company will get hired. School
officials say rankings aren't final
decisions, only the beginning of a
process in which numerous other
factors can intervene. Interviews and
records show that Sweetwater often
picked companies based on intangible
factors that were not included in the
rankings.

Choosing a company based on factors
that aren't quantified in a ranking "is
the least transparent (method) and it is
the most subjective," said Tad Parzen,
formerly general counsel for San
Diego Unified. "But the best decisions
aren't always made on quantitative
information."

Those factors are often invisible to the
public, unlike the listed criteria in
rankings. That makes it difficult to
gauge why a company was chosen
and whether the process was fair. And
when companies with lower scores are
picked because of other factors, it
appears to render the rankings
irrelevant.

The rankings became controversial
when Sweetwater chose a program
manager for the bond. The program
manager schedules construction
projects, tracks costs and documents
progress. Nick Marinovich, a
community member who sat on the
oversight committee for an earlier
school construction bond, complained
about the process for picking the new
program manager, Gilbane/Seville
Group Inc., which had ranked lower
than another company.

"The superintendent steered it the way
he wanted it to go. It was bogus," said
Marinovich, who has worked for more
than a dozen years as a project
manager with the county of San Diego
and briefly for the losing company.
Marinovich said in his experience
elsewhere, it's "very rare" that the
highest-ranked company wouldn't be
chosen.

School districts and other government
agencies have wide latitude to decide
who to choose when hiring
professionals such as architects or
attorneys. They do not have to choose
the lowest bidder, nor do they have to
follow any particular process to pick
the winner. They don't have to rank
candidates, as Sweetwater has
repeatedly done. The law says only
that for architects and engineering
services, government agencies must
use a "fair, competitive selection
process" untainted by conflicts of
interest.

No such conflicts are apparent in
Sweetwater. Some seemingly unlikely
winners did donate to help the
campaign convince voters to pass the
construction bond in 2006 or elect
school board members. But other
winning companies gave less than
their competitors or not at all. Neither
Gandara nor the school board
members report having any financial
interest in the firms.

Unlike Marinovich and other community
members who oversaw the last round
of construction projects, members of
the new oversight committee for
Proposition O said they don't get
involved in decisions about which
companies to pick, nor would they
second guess them. Rudy Gonzalez,
who leads the oversight committee for
the bond, said he ultimately didn't care
how the companies were chosen as
long as the bond was run well.

Not every winner was an unlikely one.
Sweetwater opted for the same
financial advisor that its panel of
interviewers ranked as the best. But
firms with lower rankings were
repeatedly picked:

* Sweetwater chose the two
law firms, Bowie and Garcia,
that were ranked lowest by
interviewers. One interviewer
wrote that he wouldn't
recommend Garcia at all
because the firm already
worked for the district in a
different legal capacity and he
wanted to see "checks and
balances."

  Russo, the district's chief financial
officer, said the rankings were only the
prelude to a discussion where the
interviewers decided which firms they
wanted to recommend. They chose not
to recommend the highest-ranking firm
because it had been used before,
Russo said, and the school district
wanted to give another firm a chance.
So it chose Bowie instead.

  Russo said their recommendations
then went to Gandara to choose the
top candidates to send to the school
board for approval. When asked why
the staffers ranked candidates if the
rankings weren't used to thin the herd,
Russo said: "I don't know. I guess we
didn't have to." She said they were
nonetheless useful because they
helped staff decide if any companies
were ineligible.
* To pick an architect, Sweetwater first
screened dozens of applications and
eliminated more than half. A panel
then interviewed nine architects. Two
firms that it ranked at the bottom of the
list were later recommended to the
school board over other, higher
ranked firms, along with some of the
top ranked firms.

  School district spokeswoman Lillian
Leopold said one architect was
recommended because it was local.
Another winner, Ruhnau Ruhnau
Clarke, had built two local schools that
Gandara considered better looking
than most in Sweetwater. The
company was ultimately recommended
to the school board despite having
been ranked second-to-last. It was
founded in Riverside and has a
Carlsbad office.

  "If I wouldn't have participated in that
process, Ruhnau Ruhnau and Clarke
-- who is local -- would have been cut
out," Gandara said. "What a shame if
that would have happened."


* School districts with construction
bonds typically hire a program
manager, a company that supervises
the multi-million-dollar effort. An initial
interview panel comprising district staff
and outsiders ranked Harris Gafcon
first among the companies competing
to manage the bond. It was the
program manager for the district's last
facilities bond.

  But when the choice went to a
second interview panel, another
company emerged as the winner.
Gandara said all but one interviewer
chose Gilbane/Seville Group Inc.
Meeting minutes indicate that
then-facilities director Ramon Leyba
said Gilbane/Seville "had a better
sense of what diversity meant" than did
Harris, and would do a better job of
increasing minority hires among
contractors.

  Gandara said Sweetwater had good
reasons for weighing other factors
besides Harris Gafcon's ranking. He
was displeased with renovations done
under the last bond at Sweetwater
High School. Stucco around new
windows didn't match the surrounding
building. Rain gutters on the buildings
were twisted.

  "Here's the bottom line. You can talk
about process -- should you have filled
out a form, could there be more
transparency -- but the average
person out there wants to know, 'Are
you giving me a better product at the
same cost as before?'" Gandara said.

  Not everyone was swayed.
Marinovich wrote a letter to the school
board questioning the process. Dan
Malcolm, who led the oversight
committee during the previous bond,
said Harris had done a good job and it
seemed unusual that the highest
ranked firm would not win.

* Sweetwater also needed a company
to sell bonds to investors, known as a
bond underwriter. Among the bond
underwriters who competed to work in
Sweetwater, a lower-ranked company,
Alta Vista Financial, got moved to the
top of the pack because it was a small
local firm, Russo said. It was pushed
ahead of nine firms with equal or better
rankings, even though it had already
gotten added points in the ranking for
being a local firm.
Sweetwater Education Association (SEA)

2009 Voice of San Diego
Investigations:

Ranking High No Guarantee of Winning
Work in Sweetwater

School Construction Firm Faces Fine
for Campaign Finance Violations
The Battle for Montgomery High