Garden Grove: Candidate Submarined in 2016 By Suspect GGUSD Election Interference Makes Another Try For School Board

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By:OCI Staff

More than eight years ago, Nicholas Dibs began sounding the alarm about the Garden Grove Unified School District’s decision to eliminate trades classes. The move prompted Dibs to run for the GGUSD Board of Education that year.

He lost, but has relentlessly advocated for the restoration of trades education for GGUSD students ever since, making it his signature issue.

“Not all kids want to or need to go to college, and training in school for a career in trades is valuable preparation for post-high school employment and training. This creates opportunities for students to obtain middle-class jobs early in life without taking on mountains of student debt,” according to Dibs.

He found it a lonely advocacy crusade at times, saying he generally met with silence and indifference from the GGUSD Board.

But it appears to be having an effect. Last month, the district announced a new Career Pathway in Skilled Trades – a four-year program designed for students interested in pursuing a career in carpentry, electrical, welding or plumbing. Students who complete the pathway will be eligible for direct entry into a skilled trades apprenticeship.

This year, Dibs is attempting to unseat Rocco, who is seeking a third term on the GGUSD Board of Education.

READ: GGUSD Needs Return Of Skilled Trades Classes, Stricter Oversight From School Board Members

“I’m running to bring back the Wood and Metal Shop classes that the GGUSD eliminated at all 10 intermediate schools, and the Auto Shop classes that were cut from four high schools,” says Dibs. “It ought to be a moral imperative for the district to help students acquire trade and CTE skills to obtain living-wage jobs.”

The program starts at Rancho Alamitos High School next fall and is proposed to expand to other schools in future years.

Although Dibs suspects some politics may be involved in announcing, less than two weeks before voters received ballots in the mail, a program that doesn’t start for another year, he welcomes the addition regardless of the motives. He is running again this year against incumbent Teri Rocco to represent trustee Area 1. He unsuccessfully challenged Rocco in 2020, garnering 44% of the vote.

“I’m running to bring more of these programs back for the benefit of Garden Grove Unified students,” said Dibs. “If Board members drop this announcement for political cover, so be it. As President Reagan used to say, “There is no limit to the amount of good you can do if you don’t care who gets the credit.’”

“If elected to the Board, I’ll work to ensure skilled trades programs will be launched and expanded at an accelerated pace,” said Dibs.

The GGGUSD maintains no politics were involved in the timing of the announcement.

“For years, district leaders discussed plans to launch a Skilled Trades Career Pathway, but plans were stalled due to COVID-19. The district’s decision to launch the program in late September was prompted by the need to have adequate time to recruit students for enrollment when the program begins in fall of 2025.  Course selection for all high school courses begins in February and the transfer window opens in January so promotion of new programs occurs before in the fall before the transfer window opens,” the district said in a statement sent to OC Independent.

Dibs also called attention to what he sees as an unethical pattern of the GGUSD administrators using district resources and staff to unfairly influence the electoral scales in school board races.

School districts have used taxpayer resources to influence election outcomes for decades. These range from district-funded “informational” campaigns aimed at encouraging voters to support school bond measures, to blatantly politicking on school grounds or using school property – or even students – for campaigns.

Dibs says he first encountered it during his maiden run for the Garden Grove Unified School District Board of Education in 2016, when he unsuccessfully ran against Rocco, who had been appointed to the Board of Education a year earlier.

Dibs, a credentialed science educator who was a substitute teacher in GGUSD for more than 16 years, threw his hat into the ring in 2016 out of dismay over GGUSD’s cutting and gutting of trade programs that offered a pathway to the middle-class and beyond for students who didn’t want to go to college. 

Dibs garnered a significant number of local endorsements, but he was running against an incumbent school board member, Teri Rocco.

It’s difficult to overcome the institutional advantages of an incumbent politician – even an appointed one. So Dibs said he mounted an aggressive grass-roots campaign, including legally standing on public sidewalks and handing out campaign fliers outside of several GGUSD schools.

“My goal was to meet with parents who are most likely to care about the school board elections and talk to them about why I was running,” says Dibs. “It’s anyone’s constitutional right to do so as long as you stay on the sidewalk and don’t obstruct students and school employees from coming and going to school.”

On the morning of October 17, 2016, Dibs was outside of Patton Elementary School. 

“Plaintiff was aware that it was his constitutional right to do this under both state and federal law, so long as he did not venture onto school grounds, block pedestrian or vehicular traffic, or harass anyone while campaigning,” reads a lawsuit

Around 9:30 a.m., GGUSD Superintendent Gabriela Mafi called Dibs to say parents were complaining and “warning” him against blocking traffic and campaigning in front of schools.

Dibs told Mafi he wasn’t blocking traffic, and after “considerable discussion” the superintendent agreed he was free to campaign on the sidewalk. Dibs agreed not to give campaign literature to students.

Things didn’t end there, however.

The following afternoon, Patton’s principal, Jennifer Carter, and her assistant principal, Julie Kawai, confronted Dibs, who was on a wide public sidewalk near the school entrance. Dibs says he was not blocking traffic. Carter asked him to leave. Dibs reiterated his 1st Amendment right to be on a public sidewalk and told them about his conversation with the superintendent.

“Carter and Kawai appeared upset and walked away,” states Dibs’ lawsuit.

Again, things didn’t end there. Instead, the GGUSD escalated the matter in a manner that crossed the line into political advocacy that – intentionally or not – used district resources to marginalize Dibs and undermine his credibility with voters.

Principal Carter recorded a voice message about Dibs and that was blasted out to 1,088 Patton Elementary School parents and guardians on the evening of October 18, 2016 – just three weeks before the election and coinciding with the mailing out of absentee ballots.

“Good evening. This is Dr. Carter, the principal at Patton. We have received many questions about an individual passing out political campaign flyers in and around the school parking lot.

We want you to be aware that this individual is not one of our Board of Education members. He is running to replace one of our incumbent board members, Terri Rocco.

This individual is not a board member or a teacher and is not authorized to pass out campaign materials on school grounds. The campaign material that was handed out may be disregarded as not officially authorized by our district.

Thank you, and have a good evening.”

Carter’s robo-call was egregiously biased. It is highly questionable whether it was even necessary to send it out. But if a public school official is going to send a mass-communication to residents on a topic bound up with an election matter – and does so three weeks before the election, when many voters are filling out ballots – that school official should bend over backward to avoid even a hint of bias or favoritism.

Especially regarding a school board election.

Carter’s robo-call was biased from beginning to end. She informed parents/voters that Dibs was not one of “our” school board members, a subtle endorsement. She asserted that Dibs was not a teacher, when in fact he was a credentialed science teacher who had been substitute teaching for the GGUSD for nearly two decades.

Carter painted Dibs with a hostile brush, needlessly noting that Dibs sought to “replace” one of “our incumbent board members, Teri Rocco.”

Carter closed her robocall by trying to delegitimize Dibs and tell voters to simply disregard him – while bizarrely implying the GGUSD possesses the power to approve campaign material and authorize their distribution on school property.

In other words, Carter used taxpayer resources to send a robo-call to a universe of school board voters telling them there’s some jerk trying to oust “our” board member Teri Rocco and the school district thinks you should ignore him.

Compounding this brazen intervention was the fact that Dibs was legally engaged in exercising his 1st Amendment rights on a public sidewalk – as the district superintendent acknowledged. But apparently campaigning where the parents are was verboten in the eyes of GGUD officials.

In the days that followed, a printed transcript of the robo-call was passed out to parents, according to Dibs’ lawsuit.

The district takes a different view of the incident.

“On numerous occasions, Mr. Dibs ignored laws that prohibit political candidates from campaigning on district property and interfering with ingress and egress. Superintendent, Dr. Gabriela Mafi, made repeated requests for Mr. Dibs to move to the public sidewalk to conduct his campaigning, requests which were ignored over and over, prompting a letter from the district’s legal team, reiterating the necessity that he follows the California Education and Penal code regarding outsider access to school facilities,” the district said in a statement sent to OC Independent.

Principals occupy a position of trust. The parents of their students trust them. Carter’s robo-call was wildly inappropriate and abused that trust.

Again, things did not end there.

Dibs continued campaigning on the sidewalk next to school sites. Whether or not Dibs tactic was advisable, it was legal.

According to Dibs’ lawsuit, Superintendent Mafi called him on October 24, 2016, a week after the robocall incident, complaining about his campaign method. The lawsuit alleges Mafi stated she would take the matter to the Garden Grove city manager’s office and request a police investigation.

Two days later, Dibs got a call from a Sergeant Jim Holder of the Garden Grove Police Department’s Youth Services Unit. Apparently, Mafi had indeed called the police.

Holder told Dibs he had not done anything wrong and that it was legal for him to campaign on a public sidewalk as he had been doing, and also to pass out campaign materials to anyone.

Several days later, Dibs lost the election. Rocco received 8,920 votes to Dibs’ 7,752 votes – a margin of 1,168 votes.

Principal Carter’s robocall went out to 1,088 people, who were also subsequently leafleted with the robocall transcript.

It’s impossible to definitively measure the impact of Carter’s robo-call on the outcome. But it’s absurd to suppose a GGUSD robocall marginalizing Dibs as a kook did not influence voter perception of him. The district’s robocall constituted ham-fisted and uncalled for interference in a candidate election.

Was it illegal?

Dibs filed a lawsuit alleging it was, citing state Education Code 7054: “No school district or community college district funds, services, supplies, or equipment shall be used for the purpose of urging the support or defeat of any ballot measure or candidate, including, but not limited to, any candidate for election to the governing board of the district.”

Furthermore, Carter’s robocall appears to have run afoul of the GGUSD Board of Education’s own policy on political activities:

“The Board of Education and employees, certificated and/or classified, acting as a corporate governmental agency, will not engage in any political activities relating to propositions of any kind, other than local bonds, tax increases, or other matters which might pertain to local school programs or issues which affect the operation of the districtPolitical actions which go beyond those enumerated above, carried out in the corporate name of the district, violate the bounds of propriety inherent in the functions delegated to a local governmental agency. Political activities by individual school employees are prohibited during working hours and on school district premises during working hours unless such activities are directly related to school measures as defined by provisions of the Education Code.”[Emphasis added]

The robo-call’s content was indisputably political in nature.

The question was never resolved, however, as Dibs’ lawsuit never made it to trial due to procedural errors committed by his attorney.

From Dibs’ perspective, the use of taxpayer resources by the district to shape voter opinion, or to benefit allies, has not abated.

As an example, he points to the GGUSD allowing a local realtor with political connections to Board members to use district resources to promote themselves. He points to a YouTube video embedded in the Barker Elementary School website in which realtor Jennifer Tackney interviews Barker’s principal.

Last month, Tackney hosted a fundraiser for Rocco’s re-election. According to Dibs, Tackney told him in April of last year she would be running in Area 1 if Rocco did not.

“The district has no guidelines for this sort of thing. The video is just up there on a school district website for almost two years now, which is paid for by taxpayers, promoting the business and voter visibility of someone who has ambitions to run for school board, and fundraises for the school board member she wants to succeed,” says Dibs.

“It’s cronyism and a distraction, and the families of Garden Grove Unified School District deserve better than this,” said Dibs.

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