Fourteen months after Adelanto Elementary School District Superintendent Terry Walker’s hiring into her $375,417 total annual compensation position by a lame duck school board majority, it appears she is seeking to negotiate an exit and severance from the post on the best terms possible.
Longevity has not been a feature among Adelanto Elementary School District superintendents in recent years. Since 2012, the district has employed nine top administrators.
Walker’s tenure was festooned with complications from the outset, and her hiring into what was supposed to be the permanent superintendent position was marred by the consideration that it was approved by a bare 3-to-2 majority of the school board, a week after the November 5, 2024 election in which one of the three members of the board who approved her hiring was voted out of office.
The rush to finalize her hiring involved some uncommon maneuvers and action by several individuals and entities with whom Walker had previous relationships, which have now led to further complications and accusations of conflicts of interest. With the 2026 election approaching and two of the three board members who approved her hiring in 2024 up for election in that contest, the prospect of her being able to remain as superintendent until the conclusion of her contract in 2028 has been attenuated.
Walker, a journeywoman educator, began her educational career as a classroom teacher, was later the director of educational services with the Upland Unified School District, served as a principal with the Pomona Unified School District for more than 21 years, landed a position as an education consultant with the law firm of Atkinson, Andelson, Rudd, Loya & Romo and was hired as the assistant superintendent for instructional services in the Keppel Union School District in Los Angeles County’s Antelope Valley in 2021. In April 2022, she advanced to the position of assistant superintendent of human resources with Keppel Union and four months later was promoted to superintendent. She remained in that post for six months, at which point a three-member majority of the Kepler Union School Board, without citing cause, terminated her as superintendent.
Walker recovered by Summer 2024, having been hired by Adelanto as its interim director of human resources.
The Adelanto School District was in a state of turmoil at that time, as instability in the oversight and management of the district had been a recurrent pattern over the previous two decades. Going back 12 years at that point, Darin Brawley had left as superintendent in 2012, whereupon Richard Bray served as superintendent until 2013 and was followed by Lily DeBlieux, who finished out 2013 and lasted part way into 2014. Edwin Gomez, who was in place from 2014 until 2017, and then Amy Nguyen, from 2017 until 2020, proved out as the two longest-lasting superintendents the district employed in recent years. Thereafter, Kennon Mitchell, who was in place from 2020 until 2022, was followed by Michael Krause. Krause did not make quite make it to the two-year mark, and was placed on leave in March 2024 and then reached a severance agreement in June 2024, at which point he was succeeded by John Albert.
Kruase, who lived in the southernmost electoral district within the Adelanto School District’s jurisdiction, Area 1, in the City of Victorville, filed to run for the school board that year against Area 1 incumbent Christine Turner, who had been on the school board from 2005 until 2014 and again from 2016 until that time.
Turner called upon a support network she had in the Adelanto/Victorville/High Desert community, which included two other of the board’s incumbents, Christina Steward and La Shawn Love-French, to assist her in the effort to stave off Krause’s challenge.
In September 2024, when Albert departed as acting superintendent, the board replaced him by promoting Walker from her interim assistant superintendent of human resources position to interim superintendent.
As the campaign for Area 1 board member intensified, which included Krause making an issue with regard to the lack of stability and continuity that had dogged the district over the years, Turner, Stewart and Love-French, as the board majority, called upon the district’s board counsel, Adrienne Konigar-Macklin, to see what might be brought to bear to neutralize Krause. While Konigar-Macklin was unwilling to involve herself or her firm in what could be construed as political activity involving an entity she and her firm represented, she had the district bring in outside counsel, Dominic Quiller of the law firm McCune Harber, to serve notice on Krause by letter that his candidacy was considered a violation of the non-disparagement clause of his separation & settlement agreement with the district, that the district was going to discontinue the monthly payments to Krause due him as a result of the settlement agreement, that it was going to take action against him to recover the payments that he had already received and hit him with a cease & desist order to end his candidacy for school board at once.
“Failure to cooperate will result in immediate litigation,” Quiller wrote.
Quiller did not marshal any evidence of, or follow through with action relating to, a breach of contract.
Krause did not withdraw from the race, which intensified down the home stretch in the last week of October and first few days of November. That included Walker making statements of support for Turner.
On October 29, 2024, seven days before the November 5 election, the school board voted to hire the executive headhunting firm of Leadership Associates to carry out a nationwide search for a superintendent.
The results of the November 5 balloting after votes from all three polling precincts were counted by 10 p.m. that night showed Krause leading Turner, 691 votes or 51.07 percent to 662 votes or 48.93 percent. Over the following days and weeks as the last of the mail-in ballots arrived at the registrar of voters’ office, Krause’s lead widened, after which he was designated the winner with 1,720 or 52.78 percent of the total 3,259 votes cast to Turner’s 1,539 votes or 47.22 percent.
One week after the election, on November 12, 2024, just a month before Turner was set to leave office, Turner, Stewart and Love-French voted to dispense with the nationwide search for a superintendent and instead permanentize Walker as superintendent, approving a contract with her that runs until June 30, 2028. The contract was not, as required by law, made public on the November 12, 2024 agenda. The contract conferred upon Walker a compensation package that dwarfed that of any previous superintendent, consisting of a yearly salary of $282,782, perquisites and pay add-ons of $16,747 and benefits of $75,888 for a total annual compensation of $375,417. Moreover, it involved providing Walker with a level of job security never provided to earlier superintendents. Terminating her under the contract, either with cause or without cause, required under the contract’s terms, a supermajority vote of the board, that is, four of five votes.
The vote to hire Walker was made on a 3-to-2 vote of the board on November 12, 2024, with Turner, Steward and Love-French prevailing and board members Miguel Soto Jr. and Stephanie Kyer, who were not provided with a copy of Walker’s proposed contract, in opposition.
In the district’s hiring of Walker as assistant superintendent of human resources, her promotion to interim superintendent and in the run-up to her hiring as the full-fledged superintendent, certain information was withheld from the board as a whole, which has now taken on significance.
While Walker was working as a principal in the Pomona Unified School District, Adrienne Konigar-Macklin was a member of the Pomona Unified School District Board. Konigar-Macklin, as early as 2009, began doing legal work for the Adelanto Unified School District. Part of that work involved drafting the contracts for the district’s executive level employees, including superintendents and assistant superintendents.
After Walker left her post as a principal in the Pomona Unified School District in May 2019, she immediately went to work with the law firm of Atkinson, Andelson, Rudd, Loya & Romo as an educational consultant. The firm of Atkinson, Andelson, Rudd, Loya & Romo represents over 400 school districts and other educational institutions in California, including the Adelanto Elementary School District.
Walker did not disclose to the full board her previous relationship with Konigar-Macklin, that of being a principal in the Pomona Unified School District when Konigar-Macklin was a board member there. Nor did she disclose to the board that she had been a consultant to Atkinson, Andelson, Rudd, Loya & Romo.
Despite Walker having actively supported Turner in the 2024 election against Krause and both Soto and Kyer having opposed Walker’s hiring in November 2024, after Krause was seated as a board member, the board moved forward with Walker in place as superintendent at the end of 2024 and into the winter months of 2025.
In the summer of 2025, Julie St. John-Gonzales, the district’s assistant superintendent of business services, precipitously jumped ship, leaving the employ of the Adelanto Elementary School District with no forewarning and little more than a second-hand explanation that she had been offered a higher paying opportunity elsewhere. St. John-Gonzales’s departure caught the board, which was quite satisfied with her performance, unawares and sent the Adelanto Elementary School District scrambling to replace her. In short order, Walker lined up a short list of candidates for the post, among whom was the Coachella Valley Unified School District’s recently departed assistant superintendent of business services. As interviews with the job candidates were being scheduled, the board was informed that St. John-Gonzales had left to take on the post of assistant superintendent of business services with the Coachella Valley Unified School District. This was followed by the discovery that the Coachella Valley Unified School District had made a special effort to recruit St. John-Gonzales in an effort to come to terms with a $30 million hole in its ongoing budget.
Members of the board found disturbing that Walker was militating toward having the district swap assistant superintendents of business services with the Coachella Valley Unified School District, particularly given the financial straits Coachella Valley Unified was in. Walker was instructed by the board to disinvite the applicant from Coachella Valley from the interview process, which, the Sentinel is told, Walker declined to do.
After the full board had a confrontation in public over having to essentially snub the Coachella Valley candidate and maneuver around her in pursuing the selection process for the assistant superintendent, individual board members began scrutinizing a number of issues, including items voted on and passed by the board, that had been brought before them by Walker.
According to individuals close to the school district, this examination revealed several matters where the board came to the conclusion that crucial information was not being disclosed and/or which Walker was withholding from them.
Out of this circumstance what has evolved is another 3-to-2 board majority with regard to a vast number of district operational issues, consisting of Soto, Kyer and Krause.
That division on the board, as opposed to the 3-to-2 division previously when Turner, Steward and Love-French held the upper hand and Soto and Kyer were on the outside looking in, has brought to the fore what the board majority senses to be or has documented as being a lack of thorough communication and transparency, as well as what they consider to be hidden agendas.
The contretemps escalated when board members began seeking information and requesting documentation that Walker was reluctant, or refused, to turn over. This prompted the board members to go to the extraordinary steps of filing requests and California’s Public Records Act for the district records and internal documents, material that under most circumstances is routinely available to board members. In some cases, at least, the responses to those requests created alarm, as records and documents were said to be missing or did not exist. The claim that records the district kept as a normal consequence of its operations were nonexistent was perceived as a deliberate effort by Walker to stymie the board’s exercise of oversight. In other cases, the board learned of some expenditures which seemed to have no or questionable value toward the education of the students in the district. Some discoveries appeared petty. The district in one instance had paid $1,800 for an office chair, prompting exclamations that luxurious office chairs were available for $500. In another case, Walker spent $1,500 to buy an ad in a national education magazine which was intended to promote herself. Other data pertained to far more substantial outlays in which money was, if not outright squandered, spent in ways that were inexplicable. Several of those pertained to the district engaging outsourcing of services traditionally provided inhouse, such as securing bus service from outside transportation companies when the district has buses and drivers of its own. Another involved the district’s receipt of $150,000 Expanded Learning Opportunities Program funds from the California Department of Education that was spent on items that those knowledgeable about them described as “cheap and trifling items” that were unnecessary and in no way represented an effort toward expanded learning opportunities.
Over the course of more than five months, the board majority had 75-page compendium of documentation obtained through the Public Records request process which indicated district money was being expended on items or services of no or little conceivable application toward educating the district’s 7,742 students.
Soto and Kyer began pressing for an audit of the superintendent’s office and a comprehensive fiscal audit of the district, a call which Krause did not immediately join in. At some point, the board majority’s focus, at least partially, turned toward hiring decisions Walker had engaged in.
The standard mode of operation in school districts is for the school board to involve itself directly in the hiring of the superintendent and the district’s counsel. Beyond that, with the board having supervisorial input to be sure, hiring authority lies with the superintendent together with the district’s personnel director, commonly referred to in recent years as the human resources manager or director.
Evolving out of the emerging board majority’s dissatisfaction with Walker was concern over the standards being applied in both hiring and the setting of salary levels. Reportedly, a topic that emerged in the board’s closed-door executive discussions relating to the superintendent’s performance was what options the district had in finding another superintendent, which would require that Walker be eased out of the post. The termination clause in her contract, however, required that no fewer than four of the board’s members vote to terminate her. A simple majority of three was not sufficient to fire her. This prompted an examination of how that clause had been layered into her contract.
For more than a decade, Konigar-Macklin had been framing the contracts for the district’s personnel, most notably its administrators. Going back several years, well into the 2010s, Koniger-Macklin had derived a template for those employment contracts. They were basically the same document, with some variation, most notably salary and duration, with different descriptions of duties depending on the position. Names had to be changed, dates, dollar amounts and a few other particulars, such as the perquisites that came with different positions, such as car allowance, educational enhancements and tuition subsidies, communication devices and so forth. Nevertheless, the contracts – when like title with like title was compared – were remarkably similar. What was immediately apparent was that Koniger-Macklin had deviated radically from the template and had indeed dispensed with entire parts of it altogether, when drawing up Walker’s contract. In salary alone, she was paid $55,000 more than any of the superintendents who proceeded her and was given the added advantage of the requirement that the board would need to line up the votes of for of its members to remove her from the position. On top of that was an automatic renewal clause that perpetuated the agreement based on a satisfactory or better performance evaluation by the board.
That brought to light the previous relationship that existed between Koniger-Macklin when she was a board member at the Pomona Unified School District and Walker was the principal at Grover Middle School.
Further examination revealed that Walker had other previous relationships involving those professionally involved with the district that were not generally known at the time she was hired or previously by at least three-fifths of the school board. Confronted by the consideration that Walker had been a consultant with the law firm of Atkinson, Andelson, Rudd, Loya & Romo, the board majority was unable to determine whether hiring decisions in the district were driven by an effort to bring in the most accomplished and qualified educators and service providers that the district could afford or if those decisions reflected cronyism, in which favoritism was being shown by the top administrator entrusted with guiding the district toward her friends or those who had boosted her career in the past.
The board majority moved to end its contractual relationship Konigar-Macklin and brought in Best Best & Krieger as its board-specific advisor. The law firm of Atkinson, Andelson, Rudd, Loya & Romo remains as the district’s general counsel, but now that Soto, Kyer and Krause are aware of the firm’s preexisting relationship with Walker, the board seeks an opinion from outside counsel whenever it considers any legal issues relating to Walker.
“It is fair to say,” one knowledgeable individual told the Sentinel, “that relations between the superintendent and the board soured. You can date that to the summer, right at the start of the school year.”
A special board meeting was held on August 8, 2025 to effectuate a reorganization of the Adelanto Elementary School District Board due to significant division and dysfunction among its members. Traditionally, board reorganization occurs each December, in accordance with standard district practice. However, this marked the first time in the district’s history that such a change was required outside the normal schedule, underscoring the unusual and urgent nature of the circumstances. Notably, the agenda for this special meeting is currently not posted or publicly accessible, an irregularity that has raised concerns with some community members about transparency under applicable governance laws.
It was in this same timeframe, according to multiple sources in the Adelanto community, that Walker, or those close or otherwise aligned with her, crossed a significant line that has now made any kind of rapprochement between the current board majority and Walker practically impossible. Soto, Kyer and Krause were targeting Walker, an African American woman, for removal from the superintendent’s position, Walker’s allies charged, because they are racists.
Shortly after that, the Sentinel is informed, Walker began to show open defiance to the board by resisting the placement of items brought forth by Soto, Kyer and Krause for placement on the board’s meeting agenda. This could be construed as insubordination. California Code, Education Code § 44932, which lays out the various bases for terminating a school district superintendent does not mention insubordination specifically but under subsection a(8) does reference “Persistent violation of or refusal to obey the school laws of the state or reasonable regulations prescribed for the government of the public schools by the state board or by the governing board of the school district employing him or her.”
In Walker’s case, however, termination on the basis of insubordination which was construed as “persistent violation of or refusal to obey… the governing board of the school district employing her” could only take place if four of the board’s members concurred that the insubordination had taken place. Both Steward and Love-French have made clear that they are adamantly opposed to removing Walker as superintendent.
A contingent of parents and teachers within the district have rallied to Walker’s defense. They credit her with having, in a year’s time, having turned the district around, though that is not reflected in the California School Dashboard, which makes a comparison of school districts throughout the state in terms of academic performance. The Adelanto Elementary School District remains in the 16th percentile among schools throughout California, meaning that of the 1,015 school districts in the state, in 852 of them the students enrolled in those on average outperform on average the students enrolled in the Adelanto Elementary School District on the state’s standardized tests. Test results compiled by the California Department of Education show Adelanto students have low academic proficiency, demonstrating around 12% math in math and 23% in reading.
Walker’s supporters insist that since her arrival, the district has made strides forward in increased daily attendance and academic achievement. They insist Walker is making progress and that the board needs only stay the course with her, as Turner, Steward and Love-French intended when they hired her and ratified her contract in November 2025, to end the turnover in the district’s leadership and general instability that will create a better learning environment for the district’s 7,992 students.
That element of Walker’s support, however, which has suggested the board’s ruling majority has some level of racial animus toward her and which has prompted physical threats against board members and their families has poisoned the atmosphere around the district and particularly in the district’s headquarters. The rules of confidentiality that surround public employees in California prohibit elected officials from sharing with the public any derogatory information about those working in the public sector, from state and county employees to municipal staff and law enforcement officer to those who work with water and school districts, such as line workers and both teachers and school administrators. Nevertheless, information that is in the public domain is fair game, and it is known through open court records, for example, that Konigar-Macklin was represented by Quiller in a legal matter and that Walker was serving in the capacity of district superintendent to when the district made its unsuccessful attempt to have Krause desist in his campaign for a position on the school board while Walker was simultaneously actively supporting Turner in her bid for reelection. Though the board possesses information with regard to Walker and what are politely referred to as conflicts of interest that, at least in some cases, are costing the district money it would not otherwise spend, the board’s members are constrained from publicly discussing or disclosing that information. Members of the Adelanto community, in many or most cases unaware of that information, are perplexed by what they see as the board majority militating against Walker.
Despite their inability to openly reveal what is motivating them, Soto, Kyer and Krause appear to be persisting with a strategy to effectuate Walker’s departure. This approach included the spectacle of the three requesting that Walker, who as the district’s chief executive has the ultimate authority over what is to make it onto the board agenda, scheduling a special meeting at which replacing her as the superintendent would be the specified topic of discussion and potential action. When Walker did not direct the district’s clerical staff to draft the agenda and post it, Kyer, as the designated board secretary, drew up an agenda which included discussion of Walker’s performance and her possible dismissal for a board meeting herself and then, after getting clearance from Adelanto city officials to do so, taped a copy of the agenda on the window near the front entrance of Adelanto City Hall. She taped another official copy on the exterior of the school district headquarters. This allowed for the meeting and the discussion to take place but did not result in either Steward of Love-French coming across with the crucial fourth vote to terminate Walker.
Whatever information is circulating in the community, Steward and Love-French have Walker’s back.
At the December 12, 2025 board meeting, Love-French made clear her opposition to removing Walker and expressed her view that racism is a reality in the district. She said that she, as a member of the board has “sat here as an African American woman unseen and unheard. I want this stated clearly on this record: I believe that I am being targeted, and I am deeply concerned that race is a factor in how I am being treated by other members of this board.”
Love-French took aim at Board President Soto, saying, “What we are seeing now, particularly the manner in which President Soto speaks to the superintendent, is degrading, dismissive and publicly humiliating, That behavior is unprofessional and violates the principle of oversight. Disagreement does not justify hostility. Oversight does not justify intimidation. Leadership does not justify an abuse of power.”
Love-French said, “Dr. Walker, I want you to know, publicly and clearly, that I see your work. I see the long hours. I see the impossible decisions you are asked to make. I see the way you continue to show up for this district, even when the pressure is heavy and criticism is loud. I want you to hear directly from me tonight: You have my full support. It is deeply unfortunate that some of my fellow trustees choose not to see the progress, the civility and the leadership that is happening under your direction. Instead of focusing on student outcomes, staff morale and district growth, it feels like the focus is constantly on pushing you out the door. That is not leadership. That is not stable government. That is not what our students, our educators or our family deserve. Our teachers support you. Our principals support you. Our staff supports you, and that is all that matters. If the goal is truly student success, then we should be empowering our superintendent, not tearing her down.”
If the current board majority is indeed gunning to force Walker’s exit from the district, the accusation of racial bias against her stands as a two-edged sword, one that is poised to cut through Soto’s, Kyer’s and Krause’s necks just as it is conversely aimed at Walker’s throat. The question becomes whether the accusation of racial animus against the three is an accurate depiction of reality or if it is a spurious and groundless defamation which is legitimately eroding Walker’s credibility and that of her allies.
If Soto and Kyer and Krause are cross-burning members of the High Desert Chapter of the Knights & Ladies of the Holy Order of the Ku Klux Klan, that explicates why they are so intent on driving Walker out of the community. On the other hand, the insinuations that Soto, Kyer and Krause are hateful bigots who are adamantly committed to preventing black women from succeeding is virtually indistinguishable from the refrain of those who protested when the Keppel Union School District terminated her in 2023.
The charges of racism against Soto, Kyer and Krause have been raised repeatedly and by multiple individuals. In contrast, Krause, as superintendent, is credited with hiring more African American females into leadership positions within the district than anyone else before or after him, several of whom remain in those positions.
Even though Soto, Kyer and Krause compose only three of the four votes needed to force Walker’s exit, they appear intent on scheduling a closed session discussion of Walker’s performance at each school board meeting going forward, as this provides a forum, outside the presence of the public, to confront Love-French and Steward with the consequences of their participation in the November 2024 vote with the lame duck Turner to hire Walker as superintendent and commit the district to a three-and-a-half-year contract with her.
The term “lame duck” refers to a politician/elected official who has lost an election or who did not run for reelection whose successor has been elected but whose term in office has not yet ended. The politician about to leave office is, in American parlance, said to be a lame duck, an official whose influence and political power has waned but who still holds authority. In this lame duck state, the about-to-depart politician generally speaking has little opportunity to achieve much but, conversely, is sometimes in a position, with the assistance of other officeholders, some of whom might or might not be lame ducks themselves, to take potentially bold last-minute actions before leaving office.
The 3-to-2 vote to hire Walker in November 2024 by the board majority that counted among its members Turner, whose time in office was to come to an end the following month, stands as one such bold last-minute action.
There is precedence in San Bernardino County for terminations or employment realignments that followed either lame duck chief executive/administrative personnel hirings or key changeovers on the political bodies heading governmental entities and agencies of which Turner, Love-French and Steward should have been aware.
Perhaps the most noteworthy of these was the November 2018 vote by the Upland City Council, as it was then composed, to promote Jeannette Vagnozzi, Upland’s deputy city manager who was then serving in what was supposed to be the temporary assignment of interim city manager following the September 2018 resignation of Upland City Manager Bill Manis Two of Upland’s council members – Gino Filippi and Carol Timm – had been voted out of office in the November 6, 2018 election and another council member, Sid Robinson, who had been appointed in 2016 to fill a two-year term vacancy on the council and had opted against running in that year’s election and was due to leave office in December 2018 as well. On November 26, 2018, at the city council’s last meeting before its first meeting in December when the ceremonial exit of the three departing members and the swearing-in of the new council members was to take place, the council considered elevating Vagnozzi from the capacity of acting city manager to the official position of full-fledged city manager. After the public weighed in with arguments for and against promoting Vagnozzi and after a letter from the outgoing Councilwoman Timm, who was vacationing with her parents in North Carolina over the Thanksgiving holiday, endorsing Vagnozzi was read into the record, the council voted 3-to-1 to make her the city manager.
Six months later, in May 2019, the newly composed city council voted unanimously to let Vagnozzi go as city manager, conferring upon her the $155,000 severance guaranteed in her contract.
As if Upland’s experience was not illustration enough of the risk a bare majority of an elected governmental decision-making body that includes a lame duck or lame ducks subjects the entity those decision-makers represent to in making a managerial appointment that will saddle the future decision-makers with a top administrator not preferred by the incoming majority, there were the more recent examples of the cities of Rialto and San Bernardino.
Just as the Adelanto Elementary School District going back over a decade has had difficulty in hiring a superintendent and keeping him or her in place for a sustained period, the City of Rialto has been equally challenged in maintaining consistency with its top administrators, employing 12 city managers in the less than a quarter century from 2000 to 2024. One of those was Marcus Fuller, who for two-and-a-half years beginning in 2012 had served as Rialto’s public works director/city engineer before departing to serve as the assistant city manager/chief operating officer position in the public works division with the City of Palm Springs. In June 2021, while Deborah Robertson was Rialto mayor, Fuller was lured back to Rialto with the offer to serve as city manager on a contract that was to pay him a $275,000 annual salary along with benefits and perquisites of $118,500 for a total annual compensation of $393,500. In November 2022, Joe Baca Sr., a one-time California Assemblyman, California State Senator and U.S. Congressman, ran for Rialto mayor, defeating Robertson. In the same election Two months later, Fuller and Rialto parted company. While Fuller was hired almost 17 months before Robertson was voted out of office, it was Baca’s replacement of Robertson as mayor that precipitated Fuller’s departure. In working out a severance package to effectuate Fuller’s leaving, Rialto provided fuller with a payout of $555,106 over the course of 2023, which included the 291,747.50 salary he was due to receive that year despite the consideration that he left in January and did not have to work at all the remaining 11 months, as well as another $263,358.50.
In 2024, simultaneous to what was plying out in the Adelanto Elementary School District, the City of San Bernardino, which has had 16 full-fledged, acting or interim city managers in 16 years, was involved in a situation in which it had three lame duck members of the city council – Ben Reynoso, Kimberly Calvin and Damon Alexander – all of whom had been voted out of office in the March 2024 primary balloting and were due to leave office in December while the city was dealing with finding a replacement for City Manager Charles Montoya who had been terminated by the council that May. The council had designated Rochelle Clayton to serve as Montoya’s temporary replacement while it considered how to fill the city manager’s slot. Clayton had been hired as deputy city manager by Montoya in April of that year, a mere month before his sacking,
In that year’s election cycle, incumbent Juan Figueroa had been reelected to the council, while ultimately three newcomers – Kim Knaus, Mario Flores and Treasure Ortiz – were elected to replace Reynoso, Calvin and Alexander. What had started out as virtually unanimous positive feeling toward Clayton by the entire council and the mayor fluctuated over the summer and into the fall, as Mayor Helen Tran and Councilwoman Calvin became focused on having Clayton designated to take on the city manager’s post and locking her into place for a likely duration of no less than three years and perhaps as many as five. Their intent was to do so by getting the five needed votes among the eight person panel consisting of the mayor and council before Reynoso, Calvin and Alexander left in December 2024 and Knaus, Flores and Ortiz replaced them. At different times in the fall of 2024 it appeared that Tran and Calvin had the votes lined up to extend a contract to Clayton, but a firm consensus never emerged, and Clayton’s hiring as city manager in San Bernardino on a permanent basis never took place, primarily, it is said, because Alexander was unwilling to commit the future members of the council to working with a city manager those members had not had an opportunity to vet and vote on. In early 2025, the matter became moot when Clayton was offered and accepted the position as Barstow city manager.
In April 2019, Nikki Salas, who had previously served as the assistant town manager in Apple Valley, was hired as city manager in Barstow. Nineteen months later, in November 2020, Barstow Mayor Julie Hackbarth-McIntyre and Councilwoman Carmen Hernandez were defeated in that year’s election by Paul Courtney and Marilyn Kruse, respectively. In addition, Barbara Rose was elected to the council in the same balloting to fill the void on the council that had existed since December 2019 when Richard Harpole, had resigned from the council to move to Texas. Hackbarth-McIntyre, Hernandez and Harpole had participated in the unanimous vote to hire Salas. Two months after the 2020 election and one month after Courtney, Kruse and Rose were installed on the council, they voted to place Salas on administrative leave. Less than two weeks later, recognizing that if she did not do so she would be fired, Salas resigned.
There is no guarantee that the members of the Adelanto Elementary School Board knew about all or any of the recent or historical instances within the county where a hiring of a senior governmental administrator was in short order countermanded when one or more of that administrator’s political masters were voted out of office. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to assume that Turner, Love-French and Steward recognized when they elevated Walker to the superintendent’s position and in so doing conferred upon her a contract of three-and-a-half years’ duration that was to provide her with a total annual compensation of $375,417 and be unbreakable unless four out of five future board members agreed to terminate her with or without cause that at the very least Soto and Kyer would find that arrangement objectionable and there was an even or better than chance that any new board members would concur with them. Similarly, given their political alliance, it is virtually inconceivable that they did not know that Walker had involved herself politically in that year’s election, specifically in that she had supported Turner and had been in the loop with regard to Quiller’s efforts to prevail upon Krause to drop out of the board race.
. In December, Love-French lamented that Walker was being undone by politics. Love-French’s observation was correct.
At this juncture, more than a year after the 2024 election season, some of the political eggs that were laid then have hatched and those chicks have come home to roost. Whatever her skill as an educator and administrator and her value to the Adelanto community by remaining in the superintendent’s position, while she was serving as the interim superintendent in 2024, Walker, instead of maintaining a professional distance from the electoral process became politically involved. It is not just Soto, Kyer and, most assuredly, Krause, who are aware of that but a substantial contingent of the voters and parents in the Adelanto Elementary School District. Walker was the top-ranking executive officer when the district trotted out the big gun in the form of Quiller, who took a carefully aimed shot and missed. Krause in now on the board, having replaced Turner, which has flipped the district’s political direction by 180 degrees. In the November 2024 sweepstakes, Walker put all of her money on the horse that lost.
Politics, in the current context, cut both ways. There are three votes on the Adelanto Elementary School District Board, apparently, to remove Walker as superintendent. Still, four, not three, votes are needed to effectuate her removal. She is still standing, saved by a margin of one vote.
Of some moment is how long that margin will last.
This is an election year and the board members who provide the two votes that are sustaining Walker for now – Steward and Love-French – must stand for reelection if they are to remain on the board past December. There are strong indications the union representing teachers in the Adelanto Elementary School District, the Adelanto District Teachers Association, which is affiliated with the California Teachers Association and the National Education Association, will oppose both Steward and Love-French if they run. There stands a fair possibility that one of them will be replaced with a community member who might side with Soto, Kyer and Krause, providing the fourth vote needed to cashier Walker. If a fourth vote manifests, there is a remote possibility that the termination would be made for cause, which might range from insubordination in refusing to place the items on the board agenda that members of the board majority asked for to undeclared conflicts of interest involving Walker’s relationship with the law firm of Atkinson, Andelson, Rudd, Loya & Romo to the deliberate and active withholding of other information deemed important by the board majority.
Though Steward and French have decried the board majority’s tactic of repeatedly acting to place Walker’s performance reviews on the board’s agendas as an effort to undercut Walker, it is possible to perceive that what the board is doing is seeking a middle-ground compromise by allowing a dialogue between the board and Walker to take place in closed session during which some sort of severance from the district that is relatively favorable to Walker can be negotiated well ahead of the November election, after which, it is possible, Walker will have no leverage left.
There is evidence to suggest that is what is indeed taking place. Toward the end of the January 13 meeting, Walker sounded like she is much closer than two-and-half years away from departing from the district.
“It has been an extreme pleasure and joy to do the work that we have done together,” Walker said.