ABC school board censures Groom

Loan request, lack of preparation for meetings cited.

By Kevin Butler, Staff writer, Long Beach Press Telegram, May 4, 2004

The ABC Unified Board of Education voted Tuesday to publicly reprimand board member Cecy Groom for overstepping her authority and engaging in improper behavior, including being unprepared for meetings and asking the district superintendent for a personal loan.

The Board voted 4-1, with one abstention (Groom voted no, and Board Member Mark Pulido abstained) to reprimand Groom after discussing allegations that Groom has failed on several occasions to review board meeting agendas and had asked Superintendent Ronald Barnes for a $20,000 personal loan.

"It's just plain wrong for a board member to do that,' said board president Olympia Chen.

When Barnes said he didn't have the money, Groom told him that he could put it on his credit card, according to the censure resolution sponsored by board members Chen, David Montgomery and Robert Baldwin.

Montgomery added that two former district officials, including a past superintendent, told him that Groom had asked them to loan her money.

Barnes said in June of last year Groom called him and told him she was having IRS troubles with her business. She then asked for a loan, a request he called inappropriate for an official to make of her subordinate.

Groom said that the topic of a loan came up casually during a conversation with Barnes and that Barnes had suggested she take a home equity loan from his "Lake Washington bankers.'

Groom also allegedly had been ordering or pressuring district employees without going through proper channels. After she was asked to move her car from a bus loading zone, Groom allegedly publicly berated an ABC bus driver in front of other staff members, Chen said, citing a letter from a teacher.

Groom said that she had merely parked her car in the bus loading zone to ask the driver to move the bus because it was blocking the view of parents entering and leaving the school parking lot.

Groom has failed to read her agenda and has been uninformed in meetings, Chen said, citing an April meeting in which Groom allegedly confused two different properties the school board is considering whether to declare available for sell or lease.

Groom said she hadn't been given the proper information on that matter.

Pulido, who made an unsuccessful attempt to table the motion, said the discussions between Groom and some other board members behind closed doors had been marked by "bitterness' and "hatred.'

He said the resolution offered ammunition for the next election season.

Groom later in the meeting tearfully apologized to those she might have offended.

Several community members spoke at the meeting, calling the motion politically motivated and mean-spirited.

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Last modified: May 7, 2004

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