Douglas County School Board to Vote on Superintendent Exit

This summer, the Douglas County School District terminated the contract with its previous law firm, Maupin Cox and LeGoy, which had more than two decades of education law experience. The board replaced that firm with Reno-based Joey Gilbert, a polarizing figure in Nevada, who unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2022.

Gilbert’s firm has charged the district more than $100,000 in its first two months, more than 62% of the district’s entire yearly budget for legal services. So, what is going on in Douglas County?

The Sierra Nevada Ally recently chatted with Kelsey Penrose, writer for CarsonNow.org about the latest developments.

Sierra Nevada Ally: Before we get into some of the latest, can you just give us an overview of some of the changes that we’ve seen over the last few months? I know they’ve got new legal representation. So, can you just give our readers a little bit of the background of how we got to where we are now?

Kelsey Penrose: I am by no means an expert, specifically in Douglas [County]. We at Carson Now cover all of the rural [areas]. But this kind of came onto our radar this summer due to the decision of the board to oust their, at that point, current representation of their attorneys who had been serving the district for over 20 years, in favor of hiring Reno-based attorney Joey Gilbert, who, as I’m sure you know, is a very contentious figure within Nevada.

And so, the main issue that a lot of people had a problem with is the fact that Joey Gilbert’s firm has no background with educational law. So that was kind of the big sticking point for a lot of both Douglas County residents, as well as staff and the minority board members.

So, Joey Gilbert’s law firm took over this summer, their law firm took over, replacing the previous law firm that had at least over a couple decades worth of educational law experience. I remember at the time, Joey Gilbert, told the board that he’s going to build up a team, build up expertise. Since then, it seems that the district has been paying a lot more to Joey Gilbert’s law firm than their previous representation. What have you found out with that so far?

Yeah, so he was hired in July during their July meeting. So, the retainer for the prior law firm was $5,000 per month, with a $225 per hour additional rate for anything that would go above that $5,000 retainer. Under the contract that was offered to Gilbert, his firm will or has been paid a $7,500 retainer with an additional $325 per hour above that retainer. However, what wasn’t discussed, or maybe just wasn’t discussed with the public, is what the retainer costs will pay for. What the retainer will not pay for is any conversations and communications with board members. There has been one board member in particular who during August, which was Gilbert’s first full month, ended up calling Gilbert and emailing him over a dozen times, I can’t remember the exact number. But that ended up costing thousands of dollars over the retainer because the retainer did not pay for that.

So, during that first month, the Douglas County School District was invoiced for over $35,000, just for the first month alone. A lot of what ended up being charged wasn’t for Gilbert himself, but for a member of his team, Keira Sears, who was brought on by Gilbert to assist. She has a law degree, she went to law school, but she is not licensed to practice law within the state of Nevada, so she hasn’t passed the bar. And this was a really another contentious point with both the minority board members, as well as the members of the public that spoke against it, because the school district is being charged the same rate for Ms. Sears as Gilbert was charging for himself – despite the fact that she does not have the ability to practice law.

Gilbert argues that they hired his firm, not necessarily himself to do all the work. But, out of that $35,000, $21,000 went directly to Ms. Sears during this month because of the work that she had done. And you know, the work went from public records requests to contract negotiations, which the board did not have a chance to approve of ahead of time. A couple of the board members spoke about [that] during the meeting. So that was a major issue with certain members of the board. Obviously, the majority of the board was still in favor of it, because they continue to approve his invoices.

In the first two months, it looks like we’re over half of the yearly budget for the school district when it comes to legal representation. So where are we at this point?

So, during the month of August, which was paid for during September, Joey Gilbert’s firm charged the district more than $35,000. Now, for September’s charges, it hasn’t been approved yet because it needs to be approved at the October board meeting, but that number has doubled to more than $74,000 – just for that September.

So, we’re talking about we’re talking about more than $100,000 total in these first two months?

Exactly. This is a major issue because as you know, school districts, local governments, they have to get an approved budget for fiscal years. The approved budget for this fiscal year for attorneys, if they needed to go to court, if they need to do contracts, everything that involves an attorney, the budget is only $160,000. If we’re [DCSD] spending $100,000 in the first two months alone, and that’s assuming that it doesn’t continue to double every month, people are very concerned that this is going to end up bankrupting the entire school district. Because when we’re going over budget for a certain budget, that means that money that will have to cover the extras will need to be pulled from another budget.

The other update that you wrote about that I think is important for folks to hear about, is the release of the superintendent. Can you just tell us what’s going on there? What happened with the Douglas County School District Superintendent?

There’s not a lot that we know that happened behind the scenes. Essentially, there has been a lot of issues with this board versus the superintendent, since the new board came into power approximately eight months ago. The board, the four majority board members, are very open about the fact that they have an intention to, you know, ‘fight against wokeness,’ to ‘fight against Marxism,’ to ‘fight against transgender students and individuals within the district.’ It’s an agenda that they’re very open about, and that they speak about very often.

I don’t know exactly what the issue was with the superintendent, but after hiring Joey Gilbert, they began to what appeared to be stripping the superintendent of powers that the Office previously held. There were several policy changes that were proposed that would limit powers of the superintendent. A couple of those just off the top of my head were removing the superintendent from being able to prepare agendas, and giving that power to the president of the school board. Another one that the superintendent previously has always held, is that the superintendent can bring forth agenda items or topics suggested by members of the public. With the removal of that policy, the only agenda items that could be brought forward by the public would have to be voted on by a majority of the school board. It’s said by people who are against it [that policy], that it really limits the ability of the public to have their voice heard through official agenda topics that need to be voted on.

Another major issue that happened, which some board members said led to Joey Gilbert’s contract possibly not even being legal, is that the school board members, along with Keira Sears, removed the superintendent’s ability to sign on joey Gilbert’s contract. There had been a space for the superintendent to sign and they removed that from the contract. Other board members argued that the contract couldn’t be legal, because it was not approved of either by the superintendent or the chief financial officer of the district. However, Ms. Sears argued that because the superintendent had been sent an email with the contract and he had not specifically said that he disagreed with it, that he was in fact approving of it. During the meeting, he [Superintendent Lewis] disagreed and said, ‘I absolutely disagreed with this. We’ve discussed this numerous times.’ But nothing really came about from that.

So in between the last school board meeting, which happened late September, and the first week of October, there was some sort of non-public meeting that occurred between the school board, the superintendent and the law firm where the superintendent and the school board came to a resolution that he would be terminated.

Kelsey Penrose is a writer and reporter for CarsonNow.

The Douglas County School Board is holding a special meeting at 3 p.m. to discuss the termination of Superintendent Lewis’ contract. Members of the public can join via Zoom at the link below.

https://dcsd-k12.zoom.us/j/84383384649
Passcode: Oct2023

Or by telephone at +1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose)
Webinar ID: 843 8338 4649
Telephone Passcode: 0492117