At a rowdy Thursday night board meeting, the board of the Grossmont Union High School District voted down a formal censure of a longtime trustee over behavior revealed by The San Diego Union-Tribune.
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The formal censure of Jim Kelly was put on the agenda after a Union-Tribune public records request uncovered emails showing he shared legally sensitive district information with people outside of the five-member board, flouting the district’s instructions not to.
“Mr. Kelly created a land mine,” said Rob Shield, the board’s president, who proposed the censure.
Stephanie Macceca, president of the district’s teachers union, said teachers keep confidences — individualized education plans, discipline records and personal details students share about their families — and that trustees should be able to as well.
“If one of us forwarded a confidential document marked ‘do not share,’ we would be investigated, as we should be,” she said. “Our students trust us with their information, and that trust is the job.”
Shield’s proposed censure resolution focused mainly on Kelly’s forwarding of privileged material beyond the district.
But it also raised concerns about emails Kelly exchanged with a former lawmaker in which they discussed approaching the superintendent’s husband in an effort to control her professional decisions.
Kirsten Vital Brulte, who previously led school districts in the Bay Area and Orange County, became Grossmont superintendent in summer 2025 after months of tumult for the district. The Union-Tribune had recently reported that the board’s conservative majority had communicated privately about district matters, raising concerns of open-meetings law violations.
On Thursday night, the board — after a lengthy procedural dispute — voted to reject the formal censure 3-2.
Kelly was joined by frequent ally Gary Woods and by Scott Eckert, the newest member of the board. Shield was joined by Chris Fite, the sole liberal-leaning trustee.
Before the vote to reject the censure, Eckert first moved to table the idea until later, citing concerns about its timing so soon before the November election. Kelly and Woods are both up for re-election next month, and Shield’s seat is open since he isn’t seeking re-election.
“Personally, I do not condone the releasing of attorney-client privileges,” Eckert said.
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Shield pointed out that the timing was based on when Kelly’s behavior had come to light. He said he put forward the formal censure proposal after learning of it about three weeks ago from the Union-Tribune’s records request.
“The timing is, Jim set a bomb in January, March and whenever else — and it just happened to go off,” he said.
“None of us were looking for this,” he continued. But to respond to public records requests, he noted, all relevant district email accounts were searched.
It was in January that Kelly began emailing former Assemblymember Steve Baldwin, soon after the school board had passed, 3-2, a new district policy on how to respond to immigration enforcement in response to updated state law.
In the exchange, the two men complained about the result and discussed how they might be able to change it, including by winning over the superintendent.
At Thursday’s meeting, Fite said the vote showed how democracy works — sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.
“I tend to be on that losing end, but that’s the way it is,” he said. “I don’t turn around and go call some state Assemblymember or something, or the husband of the superintendent behind her back.”
Kelly pushed back against Fite’s characterization of his email exchange, denying that he was trying to undo the board’s decision on its immigration policy.
In the public comment section of the meeting, members of the public — including educators in the district — spoke in favor of the formal censure.
One public comment included a parodic rendition of Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know.”
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“You, you, you oughta go,” sang many in the theater.
