Oversight commission says Mt. Diablo district dismissal is retaliatory, as grand jury report criticizes officials ...Middle East

CONCORD — The Mt. Diablo Unified School District is dismissing the majority of an oversight committee appointed to supervise the spending of its $150 million taxpayer-funded construction bond program, even as a new grand jury report criticizes officials for failing to ensure the panel is truly independent — undermining California law.

Unless the district abruptly pivots during Wednesday’s board meeting, commissioners say the eight-member Measure J oversight body will effectively be defunct, jeopardizing reimbursement of a controversial contract with Schneider Electric for an air-conditioning modernization project commission members had criticized for years.

District officials brushed off those concerns, saying that most of the founding volunteers on the Measure J Citizens’ Bond Oversight Committee had completed three full, two-year terms, which is the maximum service allowed under its bylaws. The six commissioners being dismissed have served since 2019.

Melanie Koslow, executive director of maintenance, operations and facilities for school district, first broke the news in an 8 a.m. email to six commissioners on Friday, according to records reviewed by the Bay Area News Group.

Not everyone being ousted is going quietly, including one commissioner who said his prediction of retaliatory dismissals is becoming a reality.

Gina Haynes, a founding member of the oversight commission and its current chair, said Koslow and other district officials have told her to “bury this thing,” because their ongoing scrutiny of Measure J will negatively impact the school district’s ability to seek voter approval for another bond.

“I don’t think we should let things go,” Haynes said on the phone Friday. “It doesn’t sit well with me, because I want to do the right thing, not bury it.”

Haynes provided Koslow and Adrian Vargas, the district’s chief business officer, records of her re-appointment in 2022, which aimed to stagger membership. By Tuesday, she said she’s received the same answer about rules that effectively bind the district’s decision.

But Haynes said past bond oversight committees for the district have kept commissioners on the roster for years and even decades — a response to the challenge the body has had finding volunteers.

“Even the Board of Education, they’re not familiar with all the past history — it takes people to know and pass that institutional knowledge on,” Haynes said. “If we’ve got people lined up to do this job, certainly I would step down after my term and let somebody else jump in, but we’ve struggled to keep membership up. Mt. Diablo has struggled with transparency, and this is just another way to silence people.”

Superintendent Adam Clark was quick to defend his district in an interview Tuesday afternoon, saying staff are simply following the rules outlined the bylaws for the Measure J oversight commission, which were established during its first meeting in August of 2019.

He said the oversight commission had raised legitimate concerns with the Schneider Electric contract, but that as those issues have been addressed, their continued scrutiny is counter-productive and the criticism has “taken a lot away from the purpose of the work.” Welcoming “fresh eyes” on the incoming roster, Clark said applications for new commissioners will be accepted in the coming months — likely after the district goes dark in July and Schneider’s reps close the project out over summer break.

A Contra Costa County Civil Grand Jury report released Tuesday morning found that the volunteer commission tasked with overseeing spending of the district’s Measure J money is insufficiently independent.

“The current CBOC is not independent as its bylaws are written and controlled by MDUSD. These bylaws give MDUSD the authority to control who is appointed as a member of the CBOC,” the jury said in its report, which was filed May 30 and approved by the foreperson on June 4 – roughly 48 hours before the district’s top maintenance and legal officials sent out notices that the board would soon have only two members.

Jim Walsh, a founding commissioner, has for months criticized the district’s failure to provide financial and legal resources the commission had requested to assist its investigation – saying the oversight body had been diminished to “an afterthought committee” without any actual power to fulfill their legal duties.

In October, he said he was concerned that the board may retaliate and remove oversight officials who voiced their opposition, which motivated him to raise the possibility of a recall effort against the school district’s trustees.

The district’s board will recognize the commission’s six outgoing members at a meeting Wednesday for their help in “ensuring transparency, fiscal accountability, and community trust in the District’s bond program.

The purge leaves only two members remaining on the CBOC: Justin Pickering, who was appointed in December of 2022 to represent parents and guardians active in the PTO, and Erin Adrian, a parent/guardian of a student enrolled at MDUSD who was appointed in June 2024.

Reflecting on his nearly six years volunteering to oversee spending of Measure J, Walsh said he believes district officials have been arrogant in their handling of the controversy around the Schneider Electric contract.

“At the end of the day, I don’t think it’s about money, because they have the opportunity here to reclaim a large amount of this contract (with Schneider Electric),” Walsh said. “I think it’s that they don’t want the public to know about it. … They’re unwilling to look at the facts and reality that these people put this over on them, and they want to cover it up.”

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