Imagine you’re a school board member.
And imagine you’re sitting at the dais during a board meeting. A member of the public – a citizens and a taxpayer – comes to the podium during public comments and ask you or another Board member to pull from the consent calendar an amendment to pay an outside law firm $400,000 – on top of the $800,000 the district has paid them in less than a year.
That citizen and taxpayer points that $1.2 million is a lot of money and the public has been given no explanation what it’s being spent on, so it would be nice and transparent if the Board would explain the whole thing to the public before cutting another $400,000 check to this law firm.
You’d probably think to yourself, “Yeah, those a valid points. This is a reasonable person making a reasonable request. Pulling it for discussion is the right thing to do.”
Not in the Orange Unified School District.
Some background.
Earlier this year, the Orange Unified School District Board of Education voted to give themselves a 400% pay increase that had been slipped onto the consent calendar and approved in the last minutes of a 6-hour board meeting, with no discussion and no explanation.
Board members have subsequently refused to discuss the pay increase or justify their votes in public.
Last week, the OUSD Board of Education displayed the same arrogance, contempt for the public and contempt for normal standards of transparent governance when member of the public asked to have an exploding law firm contract pulled from the contest calendar for discussion.
Some more background: last year, the OUSD Board approved a $400,000 contract with an outside law firm, Taos Rossini – which is not the district’s regular outside law firm.
A few months later, in December 2025, the Board voted to pay Taos Rossini another $400,000.
Last week, the Board voted yet again to pay Taos Rossini yet another $400,000.
Taos Rossini is a law firm that specializes in representing school districts in construction litigation. Given that the district is spending tens of millions of bond money on school construction, and persistent rumors that the current board wants to put another bond on the ballot – this an expenditure that merits a pubic discussion by Board members.
Crystal Miles, a member of the Villa Park City Council who is also running for the OUSD Board, made a reasonable and appropriate request for a Board discussion.
Her request was ignored by the Board members – a refusal that is especially ripe coming from Board Chairman Stephen Glass.
Glass Fails To Walk His Talk
Earlier this year, Miles had e-mailed Board members criticizing their refusal to openly discuss the 400% pay increase and explain during the board meeting their reasons for supporting it.
“The optics of that choice are damaging. It looks like the board is more comfortable approving its own raise quietly than explaining it openly. It looks like a decision made behind the cover of procedure rather than in the light of public discussion,” Miles wrote in an e-mail each Board member.
Glass’ e-mail response, which was shared by Miles with OC Independent, was mostly non-responsive palaver justifying the pay hike by saying it was legal. However, He did have this to say about addressing consent calendar items:
“Any member of the Board or the public may request that an item be pulled from consent and discussed separately. No such request was made at the time,” Glass wrote. [Miles had planned to ask for such discussion at that meeting but had to leave before public comments.]
“That said, I recognize that the optics of process are as important as process itself,” Glass continued. “Transparency and community trust remain core to our work, and your perspective is taken seriously.”
Basically, Glass was subtly attempt to shift at least partial blame for the non-discussion of the pay hike by telling Miles that she or another person could have asked for it to be pulled and discussed. Moreover, Glass clearly implies he will pull consent items if asked by the public.
Fast forward a few months and Miles does exactly that: asks the Board to pull the additional $400K for Taos Rossini and explain what these litigation costs are and why they are rising so quickly and dramatically.
“This is the second amendment [to the Taos Rossini contract]. I believe in December the first amendment for $400,000 was approved, this is now a second amendment for another $400,000 – that’s $800,000 plus the initial $400,000, so we’re at $1.2 million for this legal firm because,” said Miles.
“Again, you guys have put something on consent that is really expensive and a lot of money, and I think it would be great if one of you…all of you..would pull this and give an explanation as to why” the district is spending more on Taos Rossini.
“That’s my request that you become transparent about this very large dollar amount that, in my opinion, should not be on consent
“You talk about culture and trust and this is on way you can follow through on that by being transparent on why there is a second amendment for a total of $1.2 million.”
So imagine when every Board member completely ignores her request – including Glass, notwithstanding the pious concerns about optics and transparency and community trust he voiced to Miles a few weeks earlier.
The Board members then voted, unanimously and without discussion, to shovel another $400,000 into the Tao Rossini contract.
And OUSD voters and taxpayers remain in the dark as to what this money is being spent on – although the district, weirdly, appears to have revised the published agenda after the meeting to state the funds are for litigation.
One of the most appalling aspects of this matter is Trustee Stephen Glass opining in private to Miles about transparency and community trust, and encouraging her to ask the Board to pull consent items – and then, as Board president, to blow her off when she takes his advice.
“It is completely unacceptable that after OUSD Board President Dr. Stephen Glass told me in January that the public had the right to request a consent item be pulled for discussion — and that consent items are placed there because they are ‘unlikely’ to require discussion — my request was ignored,” told us when asked for comment.
“When elected officials refuse to even acknowledge a public call for transparency on a million‑dollar contract, the community has every right to ask: what does their silence say, and what are they hiding from taxpayers?,” Miles continued. “If this were their own money, they would never tolerate a tripling of costs without answers. The consent calendar is not a vehicle to pass major items outside of the public eye. It exists for routine, non‑controversial matters, not for million‑dollar decisions that deserve full transparency.”
Defenders of the progressive Board bloc will doubtless point out that Miles is a school board candidate and may have political motives.
Maybe she does. So what? She’s a citizen and an OUSD voter and taxpayer and the Board members have as much duty to her as to their most ardent political supporters.
