part of the conservative board majority\u2019s inner circle<\/a>. Merschtina responded by questioning district lawyers\u2019 guidance and giving her own analysis of the politics of the situation.<\/p>\nWhile the beginning of the sentence was redacted by the district, Merschtina told Kelly: \u201c[Redacted] right before a three seat Board election when we have everything on the line would only feed into the narrative that Kirsten is a hero and you and (trustee Gary Woods) are awful.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is all about power and made clear at the last Board meeting.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Trustees](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/SUT-L-grossmont-meeting-002.jpg\")
Trustees Jim Kelly and Scott Eckert chat before a Grossmont Union High School Board meeting at Grossmont High School on Thursday, July 17, 2025 in El Cajon. (Meg McLaughlin \/ The San Diego Union-Tribune)<\/p>\n
Kelly was not the only board trustee to share the sensitive information McGlashen had asked trustees to keep confidential.<\/p>\n
Trustee Scott Eckert fed information the district had identified as legally sensitive into Grok, an AI chatbot associated with the social media platform X \u2014 apparently seeking a second opinion on district attorneys\u2019 legal advice. He then forwarded the results to Kelly.<\/p>\n
\u201cHi Grok, I think you know about my board work with GUHSD, the history about [redacted],\u201d Eckert wrote in his AI prompt. \u201cOur [redacted] lawyers are [redacted]. Do you think this is a real legal concern?\u201d<\/p>\n
The chatbot\u2019s output is almost entirely redacted from the email. The only portion that is not says: \u201cThis is not legal advice. Your district counsel [redacted].\u201d<\/p>\n
Kelly then forwarded the AI output on district legal guidance to his friend John Howard, an attorney who once performed work for the district \u2014 until the board last year ended the arrangement amid public controversy.<\/p>\n
\u201cScott went to AI to get advice as to what their attorneys told us,\u201d Kelly wrote to Howard. \u201cWould you please comment on what AI analysis is suggesting?\u201d<\/p>\n
Eckert did not respond to a request for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The district\u2019s director of risk management said the records were redacted because they repeat legal advice provided to the district.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlthough it appears from the records themselves that the privileged legal guidance given was shared by at least one trustee to other individuals, there was never any authorization from the Board (a Board majority) to waive the attorney-client privilege or otherwise share the contents or substance of attorney-client privileged communications,\u201d wrote Shawn Guffey.<\/p>\n
\u201cA single Board member does not have the authority to waive attorney-client privilege held by the District or Board as an entity, and to be clear, the District declines to waive attorney-client privilege,\u201d Guffey continued.<\/p>\n
McGlashen would not say whether the sensitive information contained student information, citing attorney-client privilege.<\/p>\n
He said the superintendent expects district staff and trustees to comply with federal and state law, district policies, board bylaws and proper procedures and has held multiple governance team workshops and ethics trainings in recent months.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith respect to concerns about whether a Brown Act violation has occurred and compliance with our Rules going forward, the Board will have the opportunity to discuss such issues at Thursday\u2019s meeting,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
Such issues came up with revelations last year, and again earlier this year when Vital Brulte reminded trustees repeatedly in emails of the need to ensure they did not violate the Brown Act\u2019s ban on what are known as serial meetings \u2014 discussions in non-public forums of board matters by a majority of board members.<\/p>\n
In a Feb. 27 email, Vital Brulte \u2014 with the other board members CC\u2019d \u2014 told Kelly that she would not respond to his email under a separate cover in order not to violate the Brown Act. She instructed the other board members not respond.<\/p>\n
Weeks later, in a March 22 email responding to Kelly, she told him she would reply in a separate email with Shield copied because she didn\u2019t want to risk a Brown Act violation. Trustee Scott Eckert was also CC\u2019d.<\/p>\n
\u2018Family fights can never be won\u2019<\/p>\n
While the alleged violations of attorney client privilege seems to be the inciting incident for Shield\u2019s censure, the records request and memo show multiple concerns about Kelly \u2013 most notably after the board passed an immigration policy that adhered to updated state guidance.<\/p>\n
In the censure resolution on Thursday\u2019s agenda, Shield cites a memo he sent in May to the rest of the board, focused on Kelly\u2019s behavior in open and closed session, as well in an email thread with a former lawmaker.<\/p>\n
His memo referred to and quoted from a January email exchange between Kelly and a former lawmaker.<\/p>\n
That email exchange, reviewed by the Union-Tribune, shows Kelly and former Republican Assemblymember Steve Baldwin complaining about Vital Brulte, as well as about Shield and other trustees.<\/p>\n
In the emails, the two men can be seen making a plan to urge the superintendent\u2019s husband \u2014 former assembly member and California Republican Party chair Jim Brulte \u2014 to influence her decision making at the district.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think she knows that (it) is because of me she has her current position but her actions do not suggest any sort of appreciation or help,\u201d Kelly wrote to Baldwin.<\/p>\n
![\"Kirsten](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/sut-l-vital-bruite-interview-008.jpg\")
Kirsten Vital Brulte, superintendent of Grossmont Union High School District, on Monday, Jan. 26, 2026, in El Cajon.\u00a0 (Nelvin C. Cepeda \/ The San Diego Union-Tribune)<\/p>\n
The complaints by the two came after Baldwin had sent an email to Shield and Kelly \u2014 as well as to dozens of other people, including well-known East County conservative activists and elected officials \u2014 criticizing Shield\u2019s support for a new district policy on immigration enforcement on school campuses.<\/p>\n
That policy, intended to comply with new standards in state law, passed the Grossmont board by a vote of 3-2. Kelly voted against it.<\/p>\n
Baldwin\u2019s mass email led to a lengthy exchange of emails with Kelly, in which Kelly took credit for Vital Brulte\u2019s hiring and encouraged the former assembly member to talk to her husband.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was me single-handedly who got her appointed to be our superintendent,\u201d Kelly wrote to Baldwin. \u201cThere was a lot of people praying for me that I would eventually win the board over to vote for her because she and her husband are believers and Republicans\u2026 Something we never get a chance to vote for as a superintendent.\u201d<\/p>\n
But he also urged discretion.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you communicate with Jim Brulte and you share anything I have shared with you that is not public knowledge she will know that it came from me,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
Baldwin then emailed Brulte to share his opinion that school districts should challenge the state guidance, and to ask Brulte to instruct his wife to speak with the school board about potential risks to state funding should they reject the state guidance, and discuss a legal challenge.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour wife, as superintendent, should weigh in on this or she will go down in history as being on the job during an era in which America destroyed the concept of citizenship and started down the road of becoming a Third World nation,\u201d wrote Baldwin. \u201c(Your) wife does not need this on her record.\u201d<\/p>\n
Baldwin forwarded his long exchange with Kelly with his email to Brulte. He closed by suggesting that failure to do as he and Kelly wanted could cost Vital Brulte her job.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter all, this area is the most conservative portion of San Diego County and if this policy is allowed to stand, (I\u2019m) afraid there will be a removal of school board members and potentially your wife will lose her job,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
Baldwin told the Union-Tribune he had written to Brulte as an old friend from the legislature.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat the email does not show is that Brulte and myself had phone conversations around this time period discussing issues having nothing to do with the Grossmont School District \u2014 such as a reunion for all those who served in the Assembly together,\u201d he wrote in an email. \u201cIt was only natural I would bring up the controversy involving his wife who, by the way, I don\u2019t know. She married him after I left office.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brulte did not immediately respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n
But in January, he did not appear to welcome Baldwin\u2019s entreaty, or the emails with Kelly that preceded it.<\/p>\n
Hours after receiving Baldwin\u2019s email, he wrote to Kelly that he was disappointed to read the emails between the two men. He said he would share them with Vital Brulte and believed she would be hurt by them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He also said he had discouraged his wife from taking the Grossmont job, based on what he called \u201cthe conservative fracture\u201d at the board.<\/p>\n
\u201cFamily fights can never be won; and it seems like the conservative majority is still fighting each other,\u201d he continued. \u201cAs this continues, the only sure losers are the kids who attend the GUHSD schools.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chris Fite, the board\u2019s one liberal-leaning member, told the Union-Tribune on Tuesday that the email exchanges about it suggested Kelly had tried to go behind their backs after losing the vote on the policy.<\/p>\n
\u201cNeedless to say I was shocked and appalled,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Kelly had detailed his idea for how to handle the results of that vote in an email with Baldwin.<\/p>\n
\u201cPerhaps you could ask (Brulte) if he thinks it would be a good idea for us to challenge the state law which mandates the policy change?\u201d wrote Kelly in the email exchange with Baldwin.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was thinking of putting that on the agenda, but because I\u2019ve already voted against that policy change and was on the losing side, we have a policy that says I would have to wait six months before putting anything on the agenda to challenge that vote,\u201d he continued. \u201cBut, this would not be asking for a revote on that issue, but to move to closed session to talk with our legal council about the possibility of pursuing a lawsuit?\u201d<\/p>\n
Shield said he had never before in his years as board president felt the need before to write a memo like the one he sent in May criticizing Kelly\u2019s correspondence. He said it was the first step to ensure all board members follow the rules, and the censure is the next.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe rules addressed in that memo aren\u2019t mine,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThey are the Board\u2019s, and we are all bound by them together.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said their bylaws state that public censure is a potential remedy when a board member improperly shares confidential information.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe cannot look the other way or pretend like we haven\u2019t noticed,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThe question before us isn\u2019t about personalities. It\u2019s simply this: What kind of Board are we?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the longest-serving members of the troubled Grossmont Union High School District\u2019s board has been flouting official…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":488143,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[15,181,23,100,74,76,75,1696],"class_list":["post-488142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-education","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-top-stories-sdut"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/488143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}