The parents union that was turned back last month in its effort to utilize the Parent Empowerment Act to take over operations of Desert Trails Elementary School filed a lawsuit on April 5 against the Adelanto School District and its board of trustees.
The Desert Trails Parents Union does not appear to be funding the legal action on its own and is being assisted by the Los Angeles-based nonprofit Parent Revolution and that group’s law firm, Kirkland & Ellis.
On January 12,  the parent union submitted what its members believed were a sufficient number of signatures on petitions to force the district to undertake a set of what the parents union believes will be reforms at the severely underperforming Desert Trails Elementary School, which ranks last out of the ten elementary schools in the Adelanto School District and in the bottom ten percent of all elementary schools statewide in terms of academics, such that out of the graduating sixth grade class 72 percent of students are not proficient with the English language and 70 percent are not proficient in math.
Those petitions called upon the district to sack the school’s principal, David Mobley,  and surrender to the school’s parents authority in hiring his successor, infuse in the new principal hiring authority for the school’s faculty, reduce class sizes and increase the number of school days and instructional hours, and include more science, history and art in the curriculum.
The Parent Empowerment Act, authored by former state senator Gloria Romero and passed by the legislature in 2010, enables a majority of parents at a school at which students test out as low-performers on state academic tests to force a district to implement significant reforms, ranging from replacing the principal and up to half the staff to reopening the school as a charter academy. That process is known by the colloquialism “parent trigger.”
A group of parents opposed to the parent takeover of the school formed and went to  work obtaining rescissions of many of the signatures on the petitions.
In February, the school district, to whom the parent trigger petitions had been entrusted, announced that it had validated the signatures of only 317 of the 466 signatures on the petitions. The Desert Trails Parent Union, through one of Kirkland & Ellis’s attorney’s, Mark Holscher, demanded a recount and reconsideration of that invalidation of the petition effort and after the district did so, the board, on March 28,  voted unanimously to give a final rejection to the reconsideration of  the parent trigger petition, finding that it fell 20 signatures short of the  321 signatures needed.
Holscher and Kirkland & Ellis on April 5 filed on behalf of five of the members of the parents union – Doreen Diaz, Kathy Duncan, Teresa Rogers, Olivia Zamarripa and Bartola Del Villar – a petition for a writ of mandate and a complaint in Victorville Superior Court seeking a court order that the district verify the signatures and allow the Parent Trigger process to advance, as well as asking for the  recognition of  the educational rights of students at Desert Trails.
According to Holscher’s filing, “On January 12, 2012 70% of the Desert Trails parents petitioned the district to transform the failed school into a parent-led, community-based independent charter school. The parents’ petition was explicitly authorized by the parent trigger statute that allows parents to file such a petition for a failed school, and requires a school district to implement any petition signed by 50% of the parents.”
But the district cheated those parents in the course of its signature verification process, according to Holscher, and his writ of mandate calls upon the court to reestablish the petition as valid.
“The district ‘counted’ the parents’ votes,” Holscher said. “While nearly all vote counting for petitions and voting in California is done by disinterested third parties and with processes to ensure impartiality, the district vote counters here opposed the petition to remove the district from running the failed school. The district, however, faced an insurmountable problem: 466 parents had signed the petition, and the district had no discretion to reject the petition so long as there were 333 proper signatures. The district, unfortunately, engaged in a systematic effort to invalidate the petitions. First, despite the clear legal mandate that the district must accept every parent’s petition absent proof that a petition was not valid, and the courts’ repeated instructions that any attempt to reject a citizen’s First Amendment protected right to petition must withstand the most ‘exacting scrutiny,’ the district refused to accept 25 parents’ petitions because the district could not find a signature in its files to compare to the petition signature. The parents’ first requested relief is for this court to reverse the improper rejection of these 25 petitions. Once these 25 petitions are restored, as these presumptive valid votes must be, the petition is over 50 percent and cannot be blocked by the district. Second, the district’s teachers as well as teachers from outside the district engaged in a campaign to coerce parents to ‘rescind’ their petitions, and the district then used 97 of these purported ‘rescissions’ to block the January 12th petition.  The parent trigger statute and its regulations do not allow for any ‘rescissions’ after a petition is filed.”
Holscher’s filing  continues, “The parents’ second request for relief is for this court to rule that the district improperly rejected 97 petitions by rescinding the votes through this unauthorized ‘rescission’ process.   Moreover, not only are rescissions not permitted, the parents have uncovered smoking-gun proof that individuals who obtained the rescissions doctored and falsified rescission forms and engaged in a coercive campaign to block the petition.  Even if the parent trigger statute called for ‘rescissions’ after a vote, which it does not, the fraudulent rescission process here could not possibly survive the ‘exacting scrutiny’ that this court must apply to this rejection of the petition.  Third, the parents here request that the court grant a writ requiring the district to approve the March 6, 2012 resubmission of the petition by the parents.”
Holscher maintains that prior to the board’s March 28 vote, Adelanto School District Superintendent Darrin Brawley acknowledged the parents had garnered sufficient valid signatures to qualify for the parent trigger takeover of the school.
“The parents met with the superintendent of the district on March 6, 2012, to go over the petitions and reach agreement on the valid petitions,” according to the court filing. “At the March 6th meeting, the superintendent and the parents went through all the disputed petitions. After reviewing the petitions the superintendent specifically represented to plaintiff Doreen Diaz and another person at the meeting that ‘You are definitely over 50% at this time.’  The parents made it clear that they would only resubmit at that time and not get even more signatures if the district agreed they were over 50%. When the parents asked again and told the superintendent that they wanted to advise the school board publicly that night of the superintendent’s findings, the superintendent said it would be fine for the parents to tell that to the board.  The board then rejected the resubmitted petition by falsely claiming that the petition was again under 50%, even with the ‘corrections’ requested by the district. The parents request that the court rule that the district is estopped from rejecting the petition because the district superintendent specifically represented to the parents that the petition was over 50% knowing full well that the parents would resubmit on that basis.”
In an exclusive interview with the Sentinel, Brawley disputed Holscher and Diaz’s assertions.
“I disagree with that adamantly,” Brawley said. “I told them we still needed to go through the verification process. What they claim was said is an accurate description of their statements to me but certainly not mine to them. I handed over a stack of information and informed them they would need to go through the verification process. I never told them we were over the threshold. That would not be known without going through the verification process.”
The court papers state, “In its findings, the district purported to return the petition for being under 50 percent, again relying on rescission forms that it knew were tainted by forgery and fraud. The district relied on 70 questionable rescission forms that would be deducted from the total, even though the parent trigger statute did not even include a rescission option.  Aside from relying on fraudulent documents, the district’s own math did not add up with its prior rejection of the petition on February 21. Inexplicably, 15 students from the board’s February 21 findings were unaccounted for in the board’s March 28 findings. The missing 15 students, not surprisingly in the district’s favor, remain a mystery.”
According to Holscher, “The district acted in bad faith throughout the petition process. The district has no compelling reason that would justify the burdensome and onerous verification procedure they have crafted which has and continues to chill the protected speech of the plaintiffs.”
Brawley said that the district is “still examining the writ.” He said he and the district would defer comment until the analysis of the filing is complete and that given the legal issues involved it would most likely be lawyers doing the talking.
“That is something that will be responded to by our legal team,” Brawley said.

COLTON – Arrowhead Regional Medical Center Medical Director Dr. Dev GnanaDev has announced that he will not ask for his medical director contract to be renewed when it expires at the end of June.
Dr. GnanaDev, who will continue to serve as chairman of the Arrowhead Regional Medical Center (ARMC) Department of Surgery, has served as medical director since 2000.
Arrowhead Regional is the main campus of the San Bernardino County Hospital.
In announcing GnanaDev’s exodus as medical director, the county referred to the post he is vacating as  “a part-time position.” The press release announcing GnanaDev’s leaving said the “reasons for his decision” were based upon a “mutually agreed upon decision between Dr. GnanaDev and the county of San Bernardino Board of Supervisors to expand the medical director position to a full-time job” and that as a consequence GnanaDev had a “desire to continue devoting more time to his surgical practice.”
Chairman of the board of supervisors Josie Gonzales said, “We face unprecedented challenges in health care, particularly because of health reform and the rapid pace of change in the industry. In light of this, we feel that expanding the medical director position at ARMC to full-time status will help position our Medical Center to meet these challenges.”
Gonzales indicated that the board will begin a nationwide search soon for a full-time medical director, with input from ARMC Director Patrick Petre and Dr. GnanaDev. The medical director oversees programs of medical students, interns, residents, physicians, surgeons and other medical personnel in accordance with standards established by various federal, state and local accrediting agencies. In addition, the medical director along with the ARMC director plans the hospital’s medical programs and determines what facilities and personnel are required to carry out those programs.
During Dr. GnanaDev’s tenure as medical director, ARMC has enjoyed vast growth in the area of patient services, clinical training programs for physicians and other personnel. He helped to establish or expand ARMC’s level II trauma center, the busiest for adult trauma care in the county, ten residency training programs, a level I primary stroke center, palliative care program, and consistent, high quality care.
But there has been rocky sledding at ARMC under GnanaDev’s watch and charges of conflicts of interest involving GnanaDev as well as lapses in medical care. One issue in this regard is GnanaDev’s role as medical director while he was simultaneously the head of the surgical company that is contracted to perform all manner of surgeries at the hospital. Moreover, there have been persistent reports that under GnanaDev, the hospital’s normal triage protocols were bypassed to provide preferential treatment including surgeries and diagnoses, and the provision of treatment, drugs, pain medication and other medical services to individuals of stature and power within the county’s governmental structure. According to sources close to the hospital’s operations, there were binders designated “Do Not Bill” and further documentation showing that a host of county VIPs, including Gonzales, were given expedited treatment at the hospital which went uncharted on the hospital’s standard data recording system.
On November 4, 2010, the FBI, accompanied by district attorney’s office investigators, served search warrants at the Arrowhead Regional Medical Center. Investigators working on behalf of the U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles seized more than a score of boxes full of documentation relating to both operations and billing practices at the county hospital. No charges have been forthcoming in the more than 17 months since that raid, although there have been rumors of GnanaDev’s imminent departure ever since.
Neither the county nor GnanaDev, who in December was appointed to the Medical Board of California by Governor Jerry Brown, made mention of the allegations of conflict of interest, favoritism to elite county officials or the FBI investigation in announcing his departure.
“My heart will always be at ARMC,” Dr. GnanaDev said. “But the reality is that I simply can’t devote all of my time and energy as a full-time medical director because of the challenges my surgery group is facing, my desire to continue practicing as a surgeon and additional time commitment with other projects, such as the California Medical Board and EMS Commission.”
County spokesman David Wert said  Gnana-Dev  “has played an important role in helping to establish the Medical Center as a premier, full-service hospital.”

A vestige of what was once a way of life in not only San Bernardino County but much of Southern California will survive another half century as work began this week on the city of Redlands’ effort to replant the trees in the 10-acre citrus grove on Fifth Street between Ford Street and Wabash Avenue.
The city is using labor provided by the Larry Jacinto Farming Co., which has an exclusive four-year $821,585 contract to farm all of Redlands’ groves, to remove existing trees at the grove and replace them with 1,000 navel orange trees the city purchased using a $25,000 South Coast Air Quality Management District grant and another 500 trees donated by Modesto-based Duarte Nursery.
The current trees in the Fifth Street grove, most of which were planted 80 years ago, produce fruit of diminished size and inferior color and texture, brought about by  the aging of the trees and a condition affecting citrus called puff and crease.
Redlands is located in the midst of what was once the premier citrus growing region in the world. Over the last 50 years, however, California’s position as an agricultural powerhouse has diminished considerably. In no sector has this decline been more noteworthy than the wholesale uprooting of citrus groves and vineyards in Orange County and the Inland Empire to make way for the development of that land, in large measure as huge residential subdivisions.
As the viability of maintaining the land for agricultural purposes has ended and Florida has taken over from California as the leading producer of citrus, the city of Redlands remains one of the last entities in Southern California intent on preserving the orange, lemon and grapefruit groves that once predominated the local landscape. Beginning in the 1980s, the city embarked on an effort to purchase and preserve existing citrus groves, and at present owns and operates 200 acres of aging but still producing trees spread over 16 groves.
For a time, the city was able to break even on those operations or even realize a minimal profit, but after cost-saving cutbacks were made which diminished the  cultivation, irrigation and condition of the groves, they ceased being productive and became even more of a burden on the city. Maintaining the groves entailed borrowing $200,000 from the general fund last year. Since 2008-09, the groves have cost Redlands taxpayers more than $400,000.
While there has been criticism of the city for engaging in an arena better left to the private sector, city officials remain committed to maintaining the groves as part of the city’s heritage and are hoping that the current arrangement with Jacinto will return the operation to profitability.  The replacement trees will begin to produce fruit of marketable quality within the next six to eight years and will remain productive at that level, if cared for properly, for up to half of a century.
The city’s Citrus Preservation Commission was responsible for determining which of the city’s groves would be replanted first.

The county of San Bernardino is on the verge of becoming the largest recipient of garbage generated by the city of Los Angeles.
Within the next several weeks, it is anticipated San Bernardino County will close a deal that will allow the city of Los Angeles Sanitation Department to dispose of up to 600 tons of garbage a day at San Bernardino County landfills and pay less than the tipping fee paid by local cities and trash haulers.
County public works director Gerry Newcombe, who oversees the county’s solid waste management division, this week sought and obtained a directive from the board of supervisors authorizing county chief executive officer Greg Devereaux or Devereaux’s designee to submit a proposal responding to a request for proposal from the city of Los Angeles for processing/disposal services for residual municipal solid waste originating in the city of Los Angeles, at a  charge of between $15 to $30 per ton.
According to Newcombe, “The city of Los Angeles is soliciting proposals for processing and/or disposal services for 300 tons per day (minimum) up to 600 tons per day (maximum) of residual municipal solid waste. The term of the agreement requested by the city will be for five years, with one five-year renewal option. The county currently allows waste to be imported into the Mid-Valley Sanitary Landfill through its operations contract with Burrtec Waste Industries at a price of $27.47 per ton and through an agreement with the city of Claremont at a price of $26.75 per ton. Those agreements differ in length of term and volume of waste from the agreement expected to result from this proposal. As a comparison, the various cities within the county that have 15 year waste disposal agreements pay $36.92 per ton.”
Despite widespread concern in communities worldwide about diminishing landfill capacity, Newcombe indicated that was not an issue in San Bernardino County, at 22,000 square miles the largest county in the United States outside of Alaska. Newcombe suggested that San Bernardino County could use its spaciousness and its multiplicity of landfills to generate money.
“The solid waste management division has determined that there is existing and future capacity at Mid-Valley Sanitary Landfill due to the decrease in the volume of the waste stream being delivered to the county’s solid waste disposal system as a result of the current economic downturn,” Newcombe said. “The Mid-Valley Sanitary Landfill currently has enough additional capacity to accept 2,500 tons per day of additional imported waste. The city’s proposal to import a minimum of 300 tons per day to a maximum of 600 tons per day will generate additional needed revenue.”
Newcombe said the county’s negotiator with Los Angeles should be authorized to accept the  service fee range of $15 to $30 per ton offered by Los Angeles.
“Should the solid waste management division be selected for importation of solid waste, the solid waste management division will return to the board of supervisors for approval of the revenue contract and request any necessary budget adjustments. The revenue amount will be determined based on the number of tons per day and the negotiated cost per ton,” Newcombe said.