Suit Charges MAGA Majority on San Dieguito Union High School District Illegally Manipulated New Map Boundaries for Political Advantage

By Thomas Ultican / Tultican / March 10, 2022

Attorney Cory Briggs has filed a suit against San Dieguito Union High School District (SDUHSD) over their new Trustee Area map. California law requires school districts to rebalance the board member areas after each decennial federal census.

Led by Trustee Mike Allman three of the five district trustees apparently decided to use this requirement for political advantage. In the process, the suit claims they not only broke the spirit of the law but actually acted illegally.

All of the trustee areas experienced population growth with area-5 showing significant growth, so it was surprising to see the trustee from that area, Julie Bronstein, being mapped out of the district. Attorney Briggs stated in the suit,

“Over the last couple years, SDUHSD’s governing board has become fractured by a 3-to-2 vote on multiple topics and the board members in the majority have become openly hostile toward the board members in the minority. The majority recently misused the statutorily required procedure for adjusting the boundaries of SDUHSD’s five trustee areas in order to give the majority’s members an electoral advantage in upcoming elections, and to put the minority’s two members at a disadvantage, by altogether rearranging the boundaries instead.”

If this is true, they also ignored the warning based on the California Voting Rights Act (CVRA) from San Diego County Superintendent of Schools Paul Gothold. He wrote,

“However, under Cal. Education Code section 5019.5, each school district has an independent obligation to approve maps that are consistent with the intent and purpose of the CVRA. This section envisions that there will be adjustments to trustee areas by a district and not the wholesale re-writing of boundaries.”

MAGA Man

Michael Allman is a self-described “libertarian-leaning Republican.” He arrived in San Diego to work for Sempra Energy; he is a former executive of Southern California Gas Co. and until 2016 was an executive at a software company called Bit Stew Systems. Allman received a BS in Chemical Engineering from Michigan State University and an MBA from the University of Chicago home of infamous libertarian economist Milton Friedman.

In 2020, he ran for an SDUHSD school board seat. It was Allman’s second foray into electoral politics. He ran in the 2018 district 52 congressional primary. He was matched against incumbent Democrat Scott Peters and five fellow Republican challengers. Allman reported $415,109.45 total campaign spending in that race of which $300,000 came via his personal loan.

He garnered a disappointing 3.9% of the vote.

Four days before the 2020 school board election Allman posted,

“Teachers unions’ goals are in direct conflict with those of school boards. I will be your independent voice on the board and will work for students, parents and taxpayers. I am not beholden or supported by the teachers union.”

In his school board race, he personally contributed $29,000 of the $33,333.55 in campaign contributions and loaned his campaign another $30,000. He out-spent his opponent five to one. Allman won the seat with 7,507 votes to 7,181 votes.

He went to his first board meeting as a Trustee

n December 15, 2020 with his MAGA agenda locked and loaded.

Trustee Mossy introduced an Allman inspired proposal to change the time of the regularly scheduled Thursday at 5 PM board meetings to an alternating schedule of 9 AM and 5 PM (amended to 3 PM and 5 PM). This change to years of precedence obviously made it more difficult for working people especially teachers to attend school board meetings.

Allman wrote a proposal calling for the board to adopt Rosenberg’s Rules of Order in place of Roberts Rules of Order. According to Jurassic Parliament, the Rosenberg Rules are less Democratic giving more power to the chair and the majority. They are simpler with their rules stretching only to 10 pages compared to the 787 pages explaining the Roberts Rules, but that also gives the chair more power to make ruling interpretations. After a discussion the item was labeled a “future agenda item.”

He proposed changing the board’s legal council to Cory, Hargreaves & Savitch LLP. Most public school district would not touch such a “school choice” promoting law firm. The firm’s web site states,

“If you view charter or private schools as opportunities to improve public education, we are aligned with you. We want to help you make a positive difference.”

This proposal was sent to a legal committee for further review.

Allman’s big agenda item of the day was for all SDUHSD schools to open on January 4, 2021 for face to face instruction. Part of the resolution he authored stated, “The Governing Board designates Trustee Allman as the Board’s spokesperson for matters addressed by or arising from this Resolution.”

The board made it clear that all board members would be spokespersons and not just Allman. They also decided to start with one day a week in person before going to five days a week on January 27. After those changes the MAGA coalition of Allman, Muir and Mossy provide the three required votes.

The San Dieguito teacher’s union immediately took legal action that stopped the at once in person school openings.

From that first meeting until today, Allman has been a force dividing people and instigating scorched earth politics.

New Area Maps Reflect Radical Power Politics

The trustee positions in SDUHSD have a duration of four years with odd numbered areas-1, -3 and -5 holding elections in non-presidential off years. Areas-2 and -4 are voted on during presidential election years.

The adopted new map known as Scenario 8 radically redrew area-1 and swaps the area number with area-2. This leads to about 30,000 people in the former area-1 not voting this year and about 30,000 people in the former area-2 voting again this year. So some citizens will not vote for 6 years and others will vote after 2 years.

Trustee Muir whose term is up this year is moved into the new Area-1 and Trustee Young who normally voted with the minority is also now in the same new area-1. For Young whose term ends in 2024, she has a difficult decision to make. Does she serve out her final two years and then not be able to run for re-election in 2024 or does she run again this year for basically the same seat she won in 2020?

Melisse Mossy whose term ends this year has seen her area-3 significantly reshaped to the point she no longer lives in it. Mike Allman’s area-4 is still similar to the current map. He is the only trustee not negatively affected by the new map.

The boundaries of area-5 have also been significantly redrawn; moving area-5 Trustee Julie Bronstein who is up for re-election to the extremely redrawn area-3. At a board meeting last month, Bronstein retorted, “It would make sense, Trustee Allman, if you were being sincere about wanting it to be coastal, but the way it’s been drawn, it literally has a line just right around my house.”

The new areas-1 and -5 have no current board members living in them. The adopted map splits the cities of Solana Beach and Encinitas into three areas and it splits the city of Cardiff into 2 areas.

In the suit filing, Attorney Corey Briggs stated,

“SDUHSD’s demographers initially prepared at least three maps – known as Scenario 1, Scenario 2, and Scenario 3 – that lawfully adjusted the five trustee areas’ boundaries. Furthermore, one of the three map finalists considered by SDUHSD’s governing board on February 17, 2022 – Scenario 1C – also lawfully adjusted the five boundaries.”

Map scenarios 1, 2 and 3 were presented to the board by a lawyer from F3 Law which arranged for demographers to create them. According to Trustee Katrina Young,

“It has been stated that the Teacher’s Union is behind Map 1C. However, in two separate emails to the Board, a community member has identified herself as the ‘constituent who drew and submitted Community Maps C and D, which were presented to the public as Scenarios 1C and 6 respectively.’”

The mystery is where did the adopted scenario-8 map originate? The San Diego Union reports that all of the board members with the exception of Mike Allman who did not respond claimed not to know.

On his Facebook page, Allman claims that scenario-8 is legal and defiantly states, “The decision on which map to choose is up to our Board, and no one else.”

Observation

Democracy, the rule of law and fair play have long been upheld as American virtues. However, the former president brought into open a cancer inflicted modern conservatism causing many of its leaders to eschew these virtues. Their MAGA philosophy venerates political power above all and makes them more akin to radicals than conservatives. Conservatism has value to offer our society but when it turns against fair play, the rule of law and even democracy itself, it veers toward fascism.

In his 1894 essay “How to become a Genius,” (Selected Non-Dramatic Writings of Bernard Shaw Page 346) George Bernard Shaw wrote,

“The America of to-day is built on the repudiation of royalty. The America of to-morrow will be built on the repudiation of virtue.”

Let’s hope that was not prescient.

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