School board ends 2023 on marathon note

Dec. 29—The members of the Scottsdale Unified School District Governing Board are volunteers.

If they weren't, they surely would have qualified for overtime pay at the board's last meeting of the year.

On Dec. 12, board President Julie Cieniawski began the meeting shortly after 6 p.m.

Not until nearly six hours later did she wrap it up, declaring, "Motion to adjourn passes 4-0. The time is 11:54 p.m. This meeting is adjourned."

Thus, another controversy-peppered calendar year for the SUSD board was wrapped — though hardly with a bow on it.

Indeed, though they celebrated the achievements of students and teachers early, by the end of the meeting, board members' faces were gloomy, eyes glazed.

Over half of the meeting was spent in executive session, with board members hearing advice from attorneys — and, likely, debating several key issues out of the public eye.

Returning to the public portion of the meeting, the board voted 3-0 — with Cieniawski, Libby Hart-Wells and Zach Lindsay voting for and Amy Carney and Carine Werner abstaining — to "approve the proposed settlement agreement and release between the parties in the matter of Wray, et al. v. Greenburg, et al."

This is one of several court cases resulting from the "dossier" that put the SUSD board in an uncomfortable national spotlight.

The board approved an undisclosed settlement in a lawsuit filed Jan. 21, 2022, which stated, "Amanda Wray, Kimberly Stafford, and Edmond Richard (together, 'plaintiffs') are the parents of children who attended school in the Scottsdale Unified School District ... In this action, plaintiffs bring claims against four defendants: (1) SUSD; (2) SUSD board member Jann-Michael Greenburg; (3) Jann-Michael's father, Mark Greenburg; and (4) Mark's wife, Dagmar Greenburg."

According to the lawsuit, Wray, Stafford and Richard "allege that after they "formed associations with like-minded parents in mid-2020 an effort to 'stand up for children and engage in the political process,' including by raising "issues related to SUSD's COVID-19 policies."

The suit claimed SUSD and the Greenburgs "conspired together to silence and punish ... dissenting voices and frighten away other potential speakers who might dare express an opposing point of view."

Mark Greenburg, the father of the former board member, allegedly collected "sensitive and personal data about plaintiffs and other parents" in an effort to attack Wray and company "publicly and privately, with the intent to silence their speech."

Jann-Michael Greenburg was voted out of the board presidency near the end of 2021. His term on the board expired at the end of 2022.

In mid-2022, state Attorney General Mark Brnovich filed suit against Jann-Michael Greenburg and the district for allegedly violating the state's open meeting law.

The suit claims the district and Greenburg, during his presidency, broke that law on three separate occasions in August 2021.

Near the end of the Dec. 12 meeting, Carney showed Greenburg-linked controversy is still looming on the horizon in her request for a future agenda item:

"I would like Dr. Menzel to discuss the recent Attorney General's open meeting law investigation findings to the board and to the public."

The board also had a lengthy executive session/private meeting regarding "discussion and consideration of the superintendent's mid-year evaluation."

A public recording of what was surely a lively discussion is not available.

Earlier in the meeting, the board voted 3-2 — Carney and Werner against — to approve $450,000 in "After School Enrichment Programs."

The approval came despite Werner's concerns of "social emotional learning tools" being disguised in the programs.

Cieniawski pushed back hard against the criticism.

"Social and emotional learning is a concept describing a human being and their needs to be cared for," Cieniawski said, adding:

"This narrative — to scare the public that we are indoctrinating kids through social and emotional learning — is absolutely unfounded and ridiculous."