Chaos Overtakes Marathon School Board Meeting as Trustees Are Dragged into Middle of Trade Unions Feud
Parents and students who came for education-related topics are left standing in hallway as trade union members cram board room for Project Labor Agreement debate; plus, refinery fire updates
Note to readers: For the latest updates on Saturday’s major fire at the PBF Energy refinery, click on this link: https://martineznewsandviews.substack.com/p/breaking-news-fire-breaks-out-at
A marathon school board meeting that included lengthy items on Martinez Unified’s ongoing budget crisis, special education programs and the appointment to fill a vacant board seat devolved into chaos Monday night over an issue the board could not control — a bitter feud among local trade unions.
Several parents and students who had come to address the budget and other educational issues were left standing in the hallway outside a crammed board room in which many of the seats were occupied by representatives of the local carpenters union and Building Trades Council, who showed up to wrangle over the matter of how an addendum to the district’s Project Labor Agreement (PLA) on new school construction projects should be signed. Those left in the hallway for education topics strained to hear the discussion inside the room and could not view agenda presentations on the overhead video monitor.
A heated and chaotic discussion over the PLA item resulted in a tied vote that board President Tania Brugger was mistakenly led to believe she had the authority to break — resulting in more twists and turns after the meeting ended.
The trade union members sat through the other agenda discussions for nearly three hours until the PLA item came up for discussion. During the budget discussion that preceded it, several parents and students convinced the board to nix a proposal that would have trimmed Alhambra High School’s career and college counseling position as part of an anticipated $1.8 million in budget cuts that are due to be finalized later this month. During another detailed discussion on proposed changes to the district’s high school special education programs, parents expressed concern about a proposal to move students from some science and social science special ed classes into general education classes that would offer additional supports for disabled students.
When the board finally got to the PLA issue, fireworks and chaos ensued. The actual provisions of the PLA were not in dispute — the board had already agreed informally to extend the PLA signed in 2018 that covered projects from MUSD’s 2016 bond measure (in general, PLAs contain provisions designed to prioritize the use of union labor in construction projects). Pleased that the current PLA had resulted in construction projects largely completed on time and on or under budget, board members were more than willing to extend it to cover new projects from the latest bond, Measure O, passed in November.
The matter of dispute, rather, was only in how the document would be signed, given the carpenters union’s split from the BTC in 2023. The field representative of the local carpenters union, Rick Solis, asked the board to amend the proposed “side letter” to the current PLA to list the carpenters as a separate entity from the BTC — something the BTC was adamantly against — as opposed to simply allowing it to sign along with other BTC-affiliated unions.
“When this PLA was negotiated back in 2018, the carpenters union were affiliates to the Building Trades Council. However, as you are all aware, we disaffiliated from the BTC in April 2023 for reasons that don’t need to be brought up here but which is the reason we simply cannot agree with the adding of new funds to the current PLA without additional language that identifies the carpenters as a separate entity,” Solis told the board, saying a “signature line” on the side letter for the carpenters was not sufficient.
With the two candidates for the open Area 3 board seat still waiting to be interviewed as the meeting dragged late into the night (Brittany Ayala was ultimately chosen), representatives from the warring unions dragged the four board members into the middle of their dispute. The trustees seemed at a loss for how to resolve the impasse, as each side threatened not to sign the new PLA unless they got their way. The public comment period became increasingly heated with finger pointing between the union groups.
Tom Hansen, president of the local Building Trades Council, responded to Solis’ comments by telling the board that the carpenters quit the BTC “of their own volition. They turned their back on labor that day when they left, and now they’re attacking us.”
During board discussion, trustee Anne Horack Martin said she wanted to find a resolution that would preserve the current PLA. “I do want to make clear that our No. 1 priority is our students and No. 2 our fiscal responsibility, and I’m not willing to abandon a document that I think has given us a great deal of success in this district, so I do hope we can find a good solution…”
That wasn’t in the cards, however, as the feuding unions would not budge from their positions. Commenting that what appeared to be a simple matter of extending the PLA in December had suddenly grown complicated, trustee Courtney Masella-O’Brien said, “I don’t know how to make everybody happy, and I’d like to.”
When it came time for a vote, two board members — Horack Martin and Masella-O’Brien — favored keeping the side letter as written (and preferred by the BTC), while Logan Campbell and board President Brugger favored adding the carpenters as a separate entity. Campbell made the motion to add the carpenters as a separate entity, arguing that it “doesn’t penalize anybody and makes everybody feel included.”
But before a vote was taken on Campbell’s motion, Brugger allowed Solis to return to the podium to make another plea for the carpenters’ position, prompting Hansen to ask for a rebuttal in which he accused the carpenters of engaging in “Trumpism,” drawing jeers from carpenters.
Campbell’s motion to add the carpenters deadlocked 2-2 (adding to the confusion was the student board representative also voting no on the motion, but her vote was declared not binding as she is not an elected board member).
As the board president, Brugger ultimately broke the tie in favor of Campbell’s motion, but not before a chaotic scene in which everyone in the room seemed confused about what was happening and how to proceed. Another wrinkle ensued after the meeting, as the question arose as to whether Brugger actually had the authority to cast a tiebreaking vote.
Rossi confirmed on Saturday that she gave Brugger incorrect information about her ability to break the tie, clarifying that such power is not granted to school board presidents and that tied votes are in effect no votes. As a result, no action was taken on the PLA issue Monday, and the item will return to a future meeting.
Commenting on the situation where parents and students were left in the hallway for the budget and other education presentations, Brugger said Friday that in the future the board would work to prioritize seating in the board room to ensure that people who attend for specific agenda items can find a space when that item comes up for discussion.
The PLA debate was reminiscent of a City Council meeting earlier in the month in which the feuding labor groups also tried to sway council members about how to extend the city’s PLA, which expired in December. In that case, however, the city attorney played a key role in steering the discussion and explaining to the council the complexities of agreeing to a new PLA in which all of the covered unions were not in agreement. The council ultimately directed city staff to pursue a new PLA that could be agreed to by all parties — if such a thing is possible at this point.
With the passage of Measure O, there was an added layer of urgency for the school board to get the PLA matter resolved as it begins devising plans for new projects, though there was no clear mechanism for doing that Monday night as each side threatened to withhold its signature if it did not get its way.
Superintendent Rossi, who announced her plan to retire earlier in the evening, cautioned against allowing the PLA impasse to delay work on getting Measure O projects into the pipeline, saying that while the current PLA had worked to MUSD’s benefit, the district wasn’t required to use one for the new bond money.
Noting that taxpayers had just passed the $90 million bond measure to renovate the district’s secondary schools, she said, “They’re not going to want us to sit on this money for a few years while people work out their differences, so we have to do something.”
As the board debate, and competing motions, became bogged down in confusion, the district’s technology director, Joseph Gengler, stepped in to try to guide trustees on how to navigate the situation. “I could be wrong. I’m just a technology director,” he said after suggesting the proper parliamentary steps to carry out the motions and votes on the table, bringing a brief moment of levity to what had become a tense situation.
The oversized role that trade unions played at Monday’s school board meeting reflected the oversized role they have played in school board elections in and beyond Martinez in recent years. Though school board election campaigns rarely, if ever, mention the topic of PLAs (a foreign concept to many voters), much of the campaign money raised and spent on school board elections in recent years has come from these unions eager to secure PLAs for profitable school construction projects.
The trade unions’ influence has also been felt within the Contra Costa County chapter of the Democratic Party, which has made support for PLAs a key issue in its endorsements for school board candidates. (When I ran for MUSD school board in 2018, the first question I was asked in my endorsement interview with the party was whether I supported PLAs; I wrote an opinion column for the East Bay Times in 2018 decrying the practice).
In fact, Hansen wasn’t shy about reminding the board members of the role trade unions have played in local elections during his public comments on Monday imploring the board to reject the carpenters’ request.
“It’s obscene that people on this board who have been supported by us for years are now going to let them play their games here,” he said.
Hansen’s International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) local also gave $20,000 to November’s Measure O campaign. The measure barely topped the 55% majority required for passage in November, two years after a similar bond failed at the polls.
While Hansen on Monday said it was “obscene” that board members would consider voting against the wishes of his council in light of past support it had granted them, Building Trades Council representatives in 2020 had no qualms about going against the district’s wishes on a different matter — even after MUSD had granted the vast majority of the BTC’s demands in approving its coveted PLA less than two years earlier.
At the time, the school board and then-Superintendent C.J. Cammack were adamantly opposed to a proposal before the City Council to locate the Embarc cannabis dispensary next to the Martinez Adult School and a couple blocks from Alhambra High School, citing concerns for student safety and well-being. Cammack twice appeared at City Council meetings pleading with council members to find a different location for a dispensary farther from school sites; current Superintendent Rossi also spoke against the proposal to the council.
However, none of that stopped former Building Trades Council head Greg Feere from defying the school district and lobbying for the project’s approval. He appeared before the MUSD board on Jan. 13, 2020 — days before the final City Council vote and after Cammack and the board had already made their opposition clear — urging the school board to get behind the dispensary proposal because it would be good for local union members; the proposal was backed by the family of former Congressman George Miller, a longtime ally of organized labor.
Feere also spoke to the City Council in support of the Embarc proposal on the night the council approved the plan, along with at least one other representative of a BTC-affiliated trade union, according to the meeting minutes from that night. The clear majority of public comment that night, including Cammack and then-board members John Fuller and Kathi McLaughlin, opposed the Embarc proposal. (Fuller and McLaughlin had also both raised objections to the PLA negotiating process during board debates leading up to its passage; none of the board members who had voted for the 2018 PLA, or received trade union campaign contributions, spoke at the council meeting where the Embarc dispensary was approved).
In the years since the Embarc approval, public health officials have steadily sounded the alarm about rising rates of teen marijuana use and the dangers of locating dispensaries near areas frequented by youths. A 2021 study by the American Health Association found a correlation between cannabis storefronts and youth cannabis use. And when the City Council debated updates to its cannabis ordinance in December 2023, Contra Costa County Health Officer Dr. Ori Tzvieli told the council that “all of our surveys” are showing greater use of cannabis products by youths, including 28% of 11th graders reporting marijuana use. He said that between five and 10 Alhambra High Students had been referred to the county health department for marijuana-related issues over the previous year.
Addressing the topic of minimum distances between schools and dispensaries, Tzvieli told the council: “We recommend keeping buffer zones as large as possible.”
Board vacancy appointment
It was past 10 p.m. when the two candidates for the Area 3 board vacancy finally got to make their pitches to the board. Following the interviews of UC Berkeley community college transfer specialist Brittany Ayala and retired MUSD teacher Brenda Leal, the board voted unanimously to appoint Ayala to the position.
During the question-and-answer period with board members, Ayala, a district parent and child of immigrant parents, praised the district’s responsiveness to parents and the open lines of communication it provides, as well as the work of educators to create an environment where students can “thrive and feel seen and heard at every level and every tier.” She said that, if picked, she would “work with an awesome, amazing team that’s doing the hard work, I like to call it heart work, because it’s also in the heart that we do this work and value it.
“I would like to add on to the hard work, the difficult decisions that must be made, whether it’s data-informed, whether it’s informed by the public, whether it’s informed by our students … so that we uplift the voices and amplify those voices of our community.”
She mentioned priorities around supporting student mental health and making students feel safe; using Measure O funds to upgrade classrooms; and fostering community and parent engagement in district operations.
Ayala also referenced her personal background to underscore her passion for serving the interests of all students.
“As a teen mom, I was constantly told that I didn’t have a space. I was constantly shunned by others and forgotten and put in the shadows, and even though I may have listened to that and stayed in the shadows, I did not. I persevered. I showed persistence and passion and dedication to the work that I do. I love working with students. … I will continue to bring the level of grit and dedication and passion that I have in serving all of our students and making sure they are thriving at every level.”
The trustees all praised both candidates, saying each offered unique attributes that could benefit the board. When it came time to vote, Campbell made the motion to appoint Ayala, and each member assented.
Ayala’s appointment is provisional, meaning that voters in Area 3 could call for a special election if enough signatures are collected within 30 days of Monday’s appointment (no special elections have been called in recent history following appointments to fill board vacancies). A special election would come at significant cost to the district amid a significant budget deficit and looming budget cuts. If no special election is called, Ayala’s appointment will be permanent until the regularly scheduled 2026 election.
After Ayala was sworn into office, the meeting was finally gaveled to a close — more than five hours after it had begun.