Childish emails add to turmoil

Anyone who has covered local government learns early on that people are busy. Unless they have a pressing matter, they’d prefer to avoid the night meetings of a city council or school board.

So when some 200 people showed up Tuesday night at a meeting of the Morgan Hill Unified School district board to hear denunciations of one trustee, you knew something serious was unfolding.

That trustee, a white-haired psychologist named David Gerard, richly deserved their scorn. Using his school district email address, he sent out emails that were sexist, insulting and childish. He needs to resign as quickly as possible. More on this in a bit.

What is going on in Morgan Hill is nothing less than a titanic political struggle for control of the schools. The board is bitterly divided into two factions of three members each.

On one side — I’ll call them the good guys — are board President Bob Benevento and former teachers Donna Ruebusch and Ron Woolf. On the other — I’ll call them the disrupters — are Gerard, banking veteran Gino Borgioli and contracts manager Rick Badillo.

Ostensibly, the fight began in August, after the board voted to move sixth-graders to middle schools. Upset at that move, a parents’ group began a recall movement against board president Benevento.

A lot of folks, however, believe the real target is Superintendent Steve Betando, who governs with the consent of the good guys (alas, there is a confusion of “B’s” in this tale — all ending with a vowel).

Trustee quits

The fight became so intense in October — with emails flooding the in-baskets of trustees — that one of the good guys, Amy Porter-Jensen, quit the board, saying she felt harassed.

And that brings me to Gerard, who mixes the vocabulary of an adult with the impulse control of a seventh-grader. In a mocking Oct. 13 email to his fellow disrupters and parents, he wrote this about his fellow trustees (I’ve added the real names to clarify his nicknames):

“Watch them do their little dance! Bozo’s (Benevento’s) little spin move just like a cheerleader when he prances from one trustee’s chair to the next, passing illegal notes, Woolfy’s (Woolf’s) elephantine lumbering out of the board room to go to the pisspot every time it’s my turn to speak.

“Bully PJ’s (Porter-Jensen’s) big ass catwalk through the middle of the audience as Slimy Stevie (Betando) licks his chops as he watches her from behind as the parents’ jaws drop when they see her slut shoes.

“And Rubbish’s (Ruebusch’s) classic fingernailsscraping-the-chalkboard-voice as she asks Bozo (Benevento) what’s the vote about three

times before finally voting to let Slimy Stevie (Betando) get off after stealing $23,000 in public funds.”

Apology

Gerard has since apologized for the emails, but the damage has been done. If he were a high-school kid, he would be hauled before the dean for punishment.

At the board meeting, Roger Knopf, a man with a long and commendable record of serving the schools, stood up to demand Gerard’s resignation.

“David Gerard has exposed himself as a bully,” Knopf said. Addressing Gerard directly, he added, “You are unfit to continue to serve as a trustee.” A burst of applause followed.

For the moment, the board seems locked in a 3-3 power struggle. It could not decide whom to appoint to fill Porter-Jensen’s vacancy. It could not decide who should be the next board president (for the moment, Benevento is filling the role).

The irony of all this is that the schools under Superintendent Betando are actually doing pretty well. All my reporting tells me that morale in the district is high despite the political turmoil on the board.

Betando has earned the right to stay in his job. If the uppermost thought is supposed to be for the students, nothing the trustees do should change that fact.