Poway Unified superintendent, board hire lawyers

Embattled Poway Unified School District Supt. John Collins and his board appear to be heading toward a divorce.

Several weeks after Collins retained a personal attorney, school board members met in a rare Sunday session to do the same. The lawyer selected as the board’s special counsel, Maribel Medina, will meet with Collins’s attorney to begin working out some kind of agreement that, by several private accounts, will likely result in Collins leaving the district by early next year. Medina, who has served as in-house counsel to school boards in Los Angeles and San Francisco, will be paid $250 an hour.

“All I can say is that (the special counsel) is for contract negotiations,” Board President Kimberley Beatty said.

Through the interviews, there were several questions regarding the applicant’s experience and knowledge of representing a school board in contract negotiations with a superintendent, and specifically, their experience in negotiating a disassociation of a superintendent from the district.

Collins on Monday would say only that “The current situation is that the board and the superintendent have agreed that their relationship is not working well and we need to discuss our options going forward in the best interests of the district.”

Collins and two members of the board — Beatty and Charles Sellers — have clashed repeatedly over the past year over a wide variety of topics. Collins has also been routinely attacked during board meetings by a small group of disgruntled district residents, several of whom are now trying to recall board member Andy Patapow from office.

The start of Sunday afternoon’s special meeting was delayed by an argument involving Collins and Sellers over the room to be used. Sellers favored an upstairs conference room while Collins insisted that it be held in the regular location where the session could be recorded. The required advance notice of the meeting stated that it would be held in the district office community room. Sellers also objected to Collins sitting at the dais. The situation ended with the meeting being recorded in the regular meeting location and with Collins sitting in his usual seat at the dais.

The meeting was attended by only one member of the public, former school board member Steve McMillan, who spoke against the board holding the meeting, specifically it being held on a Sunday afternoon and not as a regular board meeting. “(This meeting) may pass legal muster, but it fails the smell test,” said McMillan.

After the meeting, Beatty released a statement that said, in part, “The timing of our meeting was driven by requests from the superintendent beginning prior to the Thanksgiving Break.”

The board held interviews with four different lawyers who were applying for the position of personal counsel to the board, then held a brief discussion before near-unanimously voting to hire Maribel Medina (Michelle O’Connor-Ratcliff voted for Medina but also another applicant, saying they were both excellent choices and she couldn’t decide).

Collins said the question of whether the board should hire its own attorney was the subject of a Nov. 16 closed session, which extended for several hours. He said he told the board that his personal attorney would be unavailable for two-week period starting this past Monday. In all likelihood, he said, talks between the two lawyers will begin after the holidays.

The recording of Sunday’s meeting is available for viewing at www.powayusd.com.

The next regular meeting of the school board will be 6 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 15 at the district office, 15250 Avenue of Science in Carmel Mountain Ranch.

Editor Steve Dreyer contributed to this story.