Former principals win case against district
By Maureen Magee
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

Nearly a dozen San Diego school principals stripped of their management duties during a 1999 personnel shake-up led by Superintendent Alan Bersin should get their jobs back in addition to lost pay and benefits, a Superior Court judge ruled yesterday.

As part of a series of swift, controversial changes made soon after his arrival as superintendent, Bersin recommended that 15 principals and vice principals be reassigned to teaching positions.

San Diego Superior Court Judge William Pate said the district violated its own procedures when it demoted the educators without giving them due process.

Attorneys representing the district are preparing to appeal the case. They insisted the employees were not demoted; rather they were legally reassigned without any intent to punish them. They also said the now-defunct due-process procedure, which would have allowed the educators to discuss the cause of their demotions with the superintendent and trustees, violated state law.

"I can't leave my common sense at the door," said Pate, a former Coronado school board trustee. "You can call it whatever you want, it's a demotion. It's clearly a demotion under any use of the English language."

By some estimates, the judgment could cost the San Diego Unified School District well over $1 million in retroactive salaries, benefits and legal fees.

Eleven of the 15 demoted educators are represented in the lawsuit. All but three have retired. Sitting in the courtroom yesterday, they pumped their fists and wiped away tears as the ruling was announced.

"It's amazing. The message is you can't treat good people so badly, so unfairly," said Anne Tracy Bolton, who was assigned a teaching job after losing her post as principal at University City High School.

The school board voted unanimously to approve the demotions in June 1999. Afterward, the administrators were put on a two-week administrative leave, escorted to their offices by police officers and armed security guards and ordered to remove their belongings.

The district contends that the employees were reassigned because their leadership skills were out of step with the new direction of the school system under Bersin. However, several of the plaintiffs had glowing performance evaluations and supervised schools where students excelled.

Bersin declined to discuss the ruling yesterday, instead referring questions to a district lawyer.

"These were principals that didn't have the skill set to implement the reforms," said attorney Ricardo Soto, who added that the judge's school board experience may have hurt the district's case. Furthermore, public officials are legally blameless for these kinds of decisions except in cases of incompetence or when the law has knowingly been violated, he said.

Contrary to the confidential tone of most delicate personnel situations, Bersin's treatment of the matter was considered brazen. The media were provided a list of the reassigned educators' names, and TV crews subsequently camped outside some of the principals' homes.

Many educators have said the demotions fueled perceptions that the U.S. attorney-turned-superintendent was an intimidating force and not to be questioned.

The personnel shake-up came less than a year into Bersin's tenure and helped establish his reputation as a top-down manager. Principals, fearful of losing their jobs, often enforced Bersin's reforms so forcefully that many teachers developed a resentment for the programs and the administration.

"The whole district fell under this cloud of worry and fear. He did it deliberately," said Barry Bernstein, who lost his job as principal at Angier Elementary School. "Will this ruling help lift the cloud? This, and a new school board, just might."

Most of the demoted educators accepted classroom positions and pay cuts ranging from $12,000 to $35,000 a year.

San Diego Superior Court Judge William Pate, a former Coronado school board trustee, said San Diego Unified violated its own procedures when it demoted the administrators without giving them due process.

The San Diego Administrators Association and the San Diego Education Association contributed to the educators' legal fund. But over the years, the determined group scrimped and sacrificed to pay attorney fees.

Brenda Campbell, for example, lost her job running the ALBA alternative school. She accepted a position teaching English at Mission Bay High School, but said she was forced to take a second job at National University to pay for her daughter's college tuition.

Similarly, Alex Cremidan went from principal at Whitman Elementary School to physical education teacher. After the pay cut, he told his USC-bound son that the family couldn't afford the tuition, so his son went to UC San Diego.

"It was hard," Cremidan said. "I don't think any job is beneath anyone. But my first day wheeling out the P.E. cart, that was tough."

Soto plans to brief the school board on the case Tuesday during a closed-door meeting. It will be the current board's final meeting before three newly elected trustees take office next month. He said the case should be appealed.

But two of the three trustees-elect – Shelia Jackson and Luis Acle – have said they want to reinstate the principals. And trustee John de Beck would not support an appeal.

"I apologized to all of the administrators long ago," de Beck said. "I never should have voted for it. I have always regretted it. . . . I went along with it because I gave Bersin the benefit of the doubt."

During a candidates forum before Tuesday's election, Acle called the 1999 demotions disgraceful.

Jackson said yesterday that any decision regarding an appeal belongs to the new board. "I don't think we should go against the judge's ruling."

Pate's decision is tentative until he finalizes it within about 10 days. In the meantime, the plaintiffs and their lawyer will decide how to tally the back pay and benefits owed to them. They also will request that the district reimburse their attorney fees, which so far have reached nearly half a million dollars.

When the case was in federal court, which was determined to be the wrong jurisdiction, the district hired outside lawyers. District officials could not provide the amount spent on attorney fees yesterday. However, Soto said, the Superior Court case has been paid for entirely by the district's liability insurance policy.

Some of the educators said they might come out of retirement to reclaim their jobs. Others have no plans to rekindle any kind of relationship with the district.

Attorney George "Bill" Shaeffer, who represents the educators, said the significance of the case goes beyond the legal system.

"There were rules in place, and Alan Bersin came in and decided he didn't have to follow them," he said. "But more importantly, this was about human beings and how you treat people."

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