Elizabeth Jaka responds to "secret meeting" libel

Below in blue are the words of Elizabeth Jaka with the perfectly innocent explanation of how three very good and long time friends happened to be in the same place at the same time.

Board member Jaka sent these explanation to the North County Times and to many of her supporters including me after our ANTI friends made a huge deal about a unplanned accidental encounter of three of the school board members.

This accidental, unplanned encounter occurred after a very long and contentious board meeting in which the board decided to cut the popular K-3 class size reduction program at the suggestion of the superintendent financial team as the best way to save money. No similar meeting has occurred since even though such meeting are ENTIRELY legal. The Brown Act specifically EXCLUDES social gatherings from its prohibition of non public meetings by members of governing boards in California. Trustees can meet anywhere anytime for social activities. There is NO prohibition against friends seeing each other. Read: http://ag.ca.gov/publications/2003_Intro_BrownAct.pdf

This is the second time I have published on this blog Elizabeth Jaka's reasonable and believable explanation of what occurred that night.

I have asked for and received her permission to publish her response to the frequent misrepresentation about this chance encounter.

Now from Elizabeth Jaka:

1) No one was "caught" violating state law or ethics. The claim was looked into and found to be without merit.

2) I was not at Mrs. Herrera's house at 1:30 that morning, I was in Oceanside, near the airport, giving a friend a ride home from the meeting (this can be confirmed by contacting Miss P**** at 760-***-****. This is public information, given at the March 5/March 12 board meetings (editor's note: I deleted Miss P****'s name and phone number to prevent prank calls. Contact info can be obtained from Trustee Jaka, if so desired ).

3) The board meeting in question ended at 12:45 a.m., not 9:30 as the blogger claims. This is documented in the board minutes here: http://www.vusd.k12.ca.us/board/Board%20Meetings/2009/02-26-2009.pdf. I didn't get off the site until after 1:00 because so many people wanted to express their dissatisfaction with what had taken place. I doubt that anyone else got out much before 1:00 either.

4) After I dropped Miss P**** at her home, I went by Mrs. Herrera's house to check on her because she was not answering her phone, and I knew her husband was out of town. I knew she was extremely stressed (we all were) and I wanted to make sure she was okay. I was surprised to find her driveway was full of cars, and there were a number of people present. Until I walked in however, I did not realize that Mrs. Chunka was also present and that I would be the third board member. At that point, I started to leave, but Mrs. Herrera left the room, remedying any violation. This obviously cannot be proven, but it is also public information that was given at the March 5 AND March 12 board meetings.

5) No one told me I "misvoted" after I arrived. The bulk of the conversation that I recall was about Read Across America, and the fact that I knew I would be facing some unhappy people when I came to their rooms to read the next day and the following Monday. I stated as much at the board meeting on March 12. Frankly, I was not interested in discussing my vote, nor would I have wanted to talk about undoing what we'd just spent six grueling hours doing (plus another two hours in Closed Session).
How would "VUSD Taxpayer" know what was discussed? He/she was clearly not there since all the statements of "fact" in the blog are incorrect.

6) Mrs. Herrera did NOT immediately call another meeting. The March 5 and March 12 meetings had been set for some time. On March 11, Mrs. Herrera did call for a special meeting to follow the regular meeting on March 12, so that we could vote on the issue one more time. This was a confirmation of the previous vote.

7) I changed my vote on March 5/12 only because the finance department came forward with an alternative to cutting Class Size Reduction. I had been to the finance office on February 27 to ask them to keep looking for other options. Mrs. Chunka did not change her vote. This is also public information, and can be found in the minutes for the March 5 meeting: http://www.vusd.k12.ca.us/board/Board%20Meetings/2009/03-05-2009.pdf On March 12, we voted to cut a buy-back day instead.

8) Although the unions did spend quite a bit of money on our campaigns, we did not receive 10s of thousands of dollars in contributions from them. They spent the money as they saw fit. That may seem like quibbling, but it's important to me. It's just as important to note that David Arnold, who tried to stop construction of our high schools, spent more than $63K on Guffanti's campaign in 2004. Although that is documented, I never see mention of it.

9) There are no secret, illegal meetings taking place. We showed poor judgment in being in the same place at the same time, and we have all publicly apologized for that, twice. Stating "Rumor is that the illegal meetings still take place" is libelous.


As a public figure, I expect to be the target of people who do not like me, and will say unpleasant things about me. However, it is unacceptable for a newspaper to support false, misleading and libelous statements.