A West Valley school board member is suing her own district, claiming her fellow board members violated the law by censuring her over allegations that she “humiliated” employees and displayed other unprofessional behavior.
The complaint stems from an investigation by outside attorney James Ledbetter, which found that Liberty Elementary School Board Member Kellie Zimmerman “seriously humiliates” district staff at meetings and broke board rules.
“There is no doubt, and the investigator agrees with the observations made by the interviewed district employees, if an employee acted in the same manner as respondent, they would reasonably anticipate termination,” Board Member Michael Todd said in August while reading from Ledbetter’s report.
But the investigation did not substantiate claims by an employee that Zimmerman violated laws against workplace harassment or that any of the alleged behavior was racially motivated, which prompted the investigation, he said.
Still, the board voted in July to reprimand Zimmerman by making the report public, requiring her to go through the board’s president to communicate with district staff or attorneys and attend sensitivity training.
The board also issued its own formal apology and directed Zimmerman to do the same.
Zimmerman denied the allegations and said the report doesn’t cite any specific incidents in which she treated staff poorly.
“I believe that I am acting in my duly elected role as a board member of asking important questions of the district to ensure that I am representing my constituents and ensuring that taxpayer money is spent responsibly and with the student's best interests in mind,” she said.
The lawsuit
In a lawsuit filed in Maricopa County Superior Court, Zimmerman’s attorneys claim the board did not have the authority under state law to investigate or censure a fellow board member in the first place and failed to provide adequate evidence proving the allegations.
“There's cases about this that say school boards explicitly do not have the power to investigate their colleagues on the board,” attorney Daniel Arellano said. “They don't have the power to censor their colleagues on the board.”
The lawsuit also claims the punishments meted out by the board violated Zimmerman’s constitutional rights, including the right to free speech, and has made it difficult to fulfill her duties as a school board member.
“Part of my role as a governing board member is to be listening to constituents and bringing those concerns forward,” Zimmerman said. “And if they don't feel comfortable bringing those to me, that's impeding my ability to represent them because a lot of our staff are constituents, are taxpayers.”
Zimmerman is asking the court to prohibit the board from enforcing the restrictions on her and declare it violated her rights and exceeded its authority.
The lawsuit names the Liberty Elementary School District and all four of Zimmerman’s colleagues on the board: Bryan Cirrincione, Kris Kenyon, Sarah Schmidt and Michael Todd.
Schmidt declined to comment, citing the ongoing litigation. The other board members did not respond to questions from KJZZ.
Other questions
It’s still unclear who actually ordered the investigation into Zimmerman’s alleged behavior, because the board never took a vote to hire Ledbetter to look into the claims.
Zimmerman’s lawsuit claims the Arizona School Risk Retention Trust, a nonprofit that provides insurance coverage to public schools and community colleges throughout the state, hired Ledbetter.
“But the problem with that is that, we don't know who — we don't know that for sure,” Arellano said. “And we certainly don't know who set the scope of this investigation, who directed the particulars of the investigation as it happened, but we do know that it wasn’t the board.”
Arellano said it is not unusual for an insurer to assign an attorney to represent its client but that is usually done in consultation with the client — in this case, the school district.
There is no mention of Liberty Elementary School District on the trust’s public meeting agendas for any meetings that took place between April 24 — when the employee made the claims against Zimmerman — and July 14, when the board voted to punish her.
It’s not the first time the Arizona School Risk Retention Trust has unilaterally made decisions on behalf of a client school district.
In 2019, the trust decided to cover legal costs on behalf of then-Scottsdale Unified School Board member Barbara Perleberg, who sued a resident who created a parody website lampooning her, even though the Scottsdale board never voted to authorize that coverage or a related lawsuit filed by Perleberg that led to the claims against her.
Representatives for the trust did not respond to a request for comment on if it is standard practice for the trust to hire attorneys to investigate board members without prior authorization from the school board.
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