A member of the Pasadena Board of Education who supported a vaccine mandate is threatening litigation over claims that her free speech rights have been violated by the board.
Attorney Dale Gronemeir said the free expression and freedom of speech rights of Board Member Tina Wu Fredericks were violated after she spoke out in support of a COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
“In a proceeding fraught with procedural irregularities, Board Members [Michelle Richardson] Bailey, [Jennifer Hall] Lee, and [Scott] Phelps attempted to chill Member [Wu] Fredericks’ outside expressive activities,” Gronemeir wrote in a letter that was sent to all board members and Superintendent Brian McDonald.
“Their method was to publicly shame Member [Wu] Fredericks as unethical because they disagreed with her constitutionally protected outside expressive activities advocating a PUSD vaccine mandate – a public health issue with immediate life-and-death consequences that is at the highest order of public interest protected by the constitutional expressive rights because of the current pandemic of the unvaccinated that especially threaten the life and health of PUSD’s vaccine-ineligible students who are under the age of 12,” the letter states.
Read the demand letter sent to the PUSD Board by the attorney representing Board Member Tina Wu Fredericks
According to district protocol, written opinions must be submitted to the superintendent and the board president before their publication.
The board collectively acts as the superintendent’s boss and the superintendent instructs staff.
Wu Fredericks raised the ire of several board members after she wrote several opinion pieces that appeared in local media outlets, including Pasadena Now, calling for a mandate that would require all staff to be vaccinated. She also appeared with Mayor Victor Gordo at a press conference expressing support for the vaccine mandate.
At a meeting in August, Fredericks was taken to task for the published pieces and for appearing at a press conference with Gordo.
According to the letter, Richardson Bailey asked that a review of the district’s code of ethics be placed on the board’s agenda for consideration.
“This type of thing is going to continue if the members don’t talk to each other more, being drag through the mud. My heart is broken by what I experienced this past week, and dismay that PUSD students are reading about the Board in the newspapers,” Richardson Bailey said.
She did not mention Wu Fredericks by name.
Hall Lee later claimed that actions taken on Aug. 9 damaged the board. Aug. 9 was the day that Wu Fredericks appeared at the press conference with Gordo to call upon PUSD to enact a vaccine mandate.
Hall Lee submitted a column to a media outlet that same month in which she wrote, “boards can be broken through partisan politics or, sometimes, not advisedly, board members may decide to ‘go it alone.’ These are alarming tactics because a fractured school board is low functioning and inhibits student achievement.”
It was not known if McDonald signed off on Hall Lee’s column. On Thursday, Hall Lee submitted an unrelated article to Pasadena Now.
Despite that reference in her column, some community members said it referred to Wu Fredericks. During the latter meeting, Hall Lee said board members shouldn’t call each other out.
“Not only were several members called out publicly this month but so was the superintendent,” she said. “We don’t tear down board members publicly, we don’t paint targets on them.”
Hall Lee also stated, “We don’t hold press conferences” and “to do so is to work aggressively with an agenda to break a school board.”
Although neither Richardson Bailey nor Hall Lee identified Wu Fredericks by name, Phelps did.
“I don’t feel that the integrity of myself and the merit of my work was recognized by Ms. Fredericks’ actions,” Phelps said.
“I don’t feel that at all. I don’t feel my integrity was respected. I don’t feel that the board member refrained from particular intention from the board. I don’t feel that was honored at all. And so that my objection is the organizing of attacks on individual board members, I don’t think it is in keeping with the code of ethics and the protocols.”
Gronomeier’s letter does not identify Board Members Patrick Cahalan, Kim Kenne, or Elizabeth Pomeroy as attempting to squelch Wu Fredericks’ free speech rights.
According to Gronomeier, Wu Fredericks will not pursue litigation if district officials “remedy the unconstitutional restrictions on her, her constituents, and the press’s outside expressive activities and her Equal Protection constitutional rights arising from the California Constitution” that are contained in several board protocols.
Gronomeier said the board has until Oct. 15 to meet his demands.
The mandate became an issue shortly after City Manager Steve Mermell required all city employees to be vaccinated.
Gordo later said the school district should institute a similar mandate, which prompted criticism from two board members.
Millions in voters-approved Measure J funds flow from the city to the district every year.
Phelps said he will not respond to the letter at this time.
“As it is a legal demand, as a matter of practice the district does not comment,” Phelps said.
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5 thoughts on “School Board Member Threatens PUSD with Litigation Over Policy She Claims Limits Her Free Speech”
When people are afraid of what someone has to say, you have to wonder what they are hiding.
Ms. Fredericks seems ineffective in either working with her fellow members, expressing herself effectively in board discussions, or in accepting the fact that her every opinion is not law. Or policy.
So she stamps her feet to the public, drags her colleagues through the mud, and holds herself as the lone beacon of sanity to the citizens to cover that up.
I agreed with Ms. Wu on her vaccine mandate opinion. I disagree with her methods, and I am reminded of similar methods used by people I had to deal with during my time on the Citizens Oversight Committee. Her disdain for healthy political debate and reasonable compromise are eerily similar. As are the targets of her wrath.
I wonder if she isn’t simply grinding a personal axe here and I don’t appreciate having to wonder that. She needs to be effective within protocol.
This BS about “free speech outside my position” is also the same as previous chairs of the COC placing political opinions on bond issues while giving the impression they were acting in an official capacity.
When Ms. Wu continues failed debate in the papers or appears alongside the Mayor – alongside the Mayor – she certainly is confusing the citizens as to which is her personal opinion and which is her official capacity.
Dirty pool – same game.
The board members seem too preoccupied with optics and protocol, losing sight of the very important issue at hand. These people have a misplaced sense of urgency which makes me believe Ms. Fredericks position.
Postscript: I wholeheartedly agree with Francis Boland’s comments as they apply to members of citizen oversight committees. In my opinion, political activists should not use their volunteer membership on such committees as a platform to publicly advance their preferred political cause (especially when their political cause directly intersects with the business of the committee). As elected officials, School Board members are in a different situation. I expect that the constituents of each Board member would appreciate more public communication from the officials they voted into office.
As a PUSD parent of an elementary age student who was unvaccinated and about to enter a school of about 500 students all unvaccinated, I was very glad that Tina Fredericks as my elected PUSD board member representative spoke up and alerted the community of gaps in PUSD’s reopening plan re vaccines and testing which were not in compliance with either the state, county, or city’s public health guidance at the time schools reopened.
As the CA PTA advises:
“Protecting the health (both physical and mental) and wellbeing of our students and staff is of *prime* importance whether schools implement in-person, hybrid or exclusively distance learning. ”
Rather than Board members disciplining her, in my view Fredericks should be thanked for highlighting such a critical safety need.
I was actually deeply troubled that Board members would seek to discipline Fredericks for keeping me as a constituent informed and for speaking up and voicing concerns held by me and so many other PUSD parents on such a critical issue affecting the health and wellbeing of elementary age students which make up almost half of all PUSD students.