Testimony: Trustees didn’t know it was a lawsuit

Douglas County School Board Trustee Katherine Dickerson testified during open court Wednesday that she did not know she and the school district were being sued until a hearing began the previous day.

An evidentiary hearing on a records lawsuit brought against Douglas County School Board trustees David Burns, Susan Jansen, Dickerson, and Doug Englekirk wrapped up in Douglas County District Court with Judge Thomas Gregory presiding.

After two days of testimony, Gregory took the records lawsuit under advisement and will issue a written ruling at some point. Should he find that they are liable they would have to pay legal fees and could face civil penalties.

In May and July 2023, petitioners Joe Girdner, Robbe Lehmann, Dean Miller, and Marty Swisher, submitted two public records requests to the Douglas County School District and the four trustees accusing them of withholding information that would indicate they were conducting board business outside of public meetings.

The public records request sought communications to, from, and between the four trustees and other names including Joey Gilbert regarding various topics from the decision of who would be board president and vice president, the firing of Maupin, Cox and LeGoy and hiring Joey Gilbert Law, to outside political influence.

During the hearing, the four trustees claimed that none of them understood the documents that came before them including the affidavit they signed stating they had provided all of the records requested.

“I have never been in a court of law in my life, I relied heavily on my attorneys,” said Dickerson. “I assumed that what I was signing meant that I had provided everything for them.”

Burns, Jansen, and Englekirk also claimed to have relied on their attorneys, yet when the first records request was brought before the trustees in May 2023, Rick Hsu of Maupin, Cox, and LeGoy Law, who was the school district legal counsel at the time, advised the trustees to refrain from using their personal phones and emails. They ignored the advice.

Burns stated he didn’t have a district phone and was never provided one, yet an email exchange between him and previous secretary to the superintendent and School Board Secretary Caryn Harper provided evidence that Harper tried to set up the phone with Burns.

And there were several screen shots of personal emails between the trustees that proved they had been either using their personal emails to conduct board business or were forwarding board-related business from their district emails to their personal accounts.

The trustees claimed to not have had a clear understanding of what was board business and what were “random things,” constituents were concerned about. They also claimed that they never had training on open meeting law, board policies, or their roles as trustees.

According to Trustee Yvonne Wagstaff, who has been a board member since January, after replacing Tony Magnotta, said training is done on the trustees’ time.

“There are different organizations, like NASB and others, that we sign up for on our own time and we can’t always go to all because life happens, but that’s how it’s done,” Wagstaff told The Record-Courier.

The hearing was a continuance from one held March 27 during which a settlement was reached after four hours of testimony from former Superintendent Keith Lewis and Jansen.

The settlement stated a search would be performed by Douglas County IT Director Michael Roth, the school district would be responsible for paying attorney costs for the petitioners, which would be determined and approved by the board, trustees were required to perform another thorough search from a mutually agreed third party and the district would provide additional training to the trustees regarding Nevada’s open records law.

The settlement was agendized for the April 9 school board meeting where Wagstaff made a motion not to approve the settlement and to have the attorneys negotiate more favorable terms for the district. The motion was seconded by Trustee Carey Kangas, passing 3-0 with Vice President Linda Gilkerson in favor and the other four trustees abstaining due to conflict of interest.