Three years after Grossmont Union High School District ended its work with a mental health services provider over the organization’s support of LGBTQ+ youths, a new report by a watchdog group says the decision was at odds with district plans and was harmful to students.
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The county civil grand jury concluded the school board canceled the contract based on a misrepresentation of the facts, failed to act in students’ best interest, disparaged the school community and took actions that were supposed to be handled by district staff.
The school district should collaborate anew with San Diego Youth Services, three years after it opted not to renew the organization’s contract, the 41-page report says.
It also recommends the district’s board of trustees comply with a number of its own policies, ensure continuity of services for students and align its decisions with both its own plan and state law.
Grossmont is reviewing the report and will write an official response within 90 days as required by law, said district spokesperson Collin McGlashen.
He characterized the report as a difference of opinion about the board’s actions, rather than findings that the board violated its policies.
“Reasonable people may disagree with those decisions. However, disagreement with a Board decision is not, in and of itself, evidence that Board policies, bylaws, or the Education Code were violated,” McGlashen wrote in an email.
The report follows a contentious few years for the East County high school district, which has seen a revolving door of superintendents, a spate of litigation and a rebellion over layoffs.
In 2023, its board voted not to renew its contract with San Diego Youth Services — a decision the report says left district students without mental health services for four months.
Meridith Coady, the chair of the civil grand jury’s education committee and author of the report, said she became interested in Grossmont’s handling of the contract after seeing students advocate for it and reading The San Diego Union-Tribune’s reporting on the district’s governance.
“I was really struck by the board meeting … and just the passion of the students speaking about how important San Diego Youth Services had been for them,” she said.
Her panel’s report found that the school board rejected a renewal of the contract after a public comment made by someone “who had no mental health training or licensure” and who made claims “easily disproven with minimal fact-finding.”
The report doesn’t identify that person, but it appears to refer to Anthony Carnevale, a board trustee for Cajon Valley Union School District, an elementary district that feeds into Grossmont.
Carnevale had objected to a separate San Diego Youth Services program called Our Safe Place, which provides mental health services and other support for LGBTQ+ youths. Grossmont’s contract did not include that program.
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Asked for comment, Carnevale said he shared San Diego Youth Services materials he found objectionable with the grand jury at its request.
In a Facebook post, he called the report “a partisan hit piece that obsesses over my public comment and treats elected trustees like subordinates who must obey unelected bureaucrats.”
“This report is a blatant attempt by unelected activists to supplant the will of the voters,” he wrote.
In its report, the grand jury found that even on Grossmont campuses where contracts with San Diego Youth Services were still in place, the services provider was met with stigma and uncooperation.
The panel also explored what a trustee meant when he declared, in deciding not to renew the organization’s contract, that “we need to look for alternatives that best reflect the East County values.”
The phrase “East County values” was a “flashpoint” in the discussion but was not defined at the time, the grand jury said. But it pointed to later text messages obtained by the Union-Tribune for a clearer sense of what the trustee meant.
“Our community values are respect, responsibility, resilience and rigor,” Gary Woods had said at a January 2025 board meeting.
In a subsequent text message to a group that included other board members, Woods wrote: “East County Values! Respect, Responsibility, Resilience, Rigor. Let’s end DEI.”
That goal was not shared with the services provider, the grand jury report says.
Both San Diego Youth Services and another organization contracted by the district “followed the law and maintain internal policies to ensure students had access to services, regardless of their gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, disability or other characteristics,” it found.
“The Trustee’s stated goal of ending diversity, equity, and inclusion as part of ‘East County Values’ was not shared by the providers working directly with students,” the report said.
Jonathan Castillo, the CEO of San Diego Youth Services, said his organization is open to working with Grossmont again.
“Our concern was the disruption in care for students who relied on those services and the trusted relationships they had built with our mental health team,” he said in a statement. “We remain committed to the well-being of youth in our community and would welcome the opportunity to partner with Grossmont Union High School District again in the future.”
