Editor’s Note: This was sent to myBurbank for publication after being read at a School Board meeting.
Letter to the Editor:
Good evening, Board members
Last June when I first came to a Board meeting to express my disappointment with Char Tabet’s actions I also expressed my concerns about what I perceived as systemic failures of your governance.
To learn more about the Tabet fiasco I submitted a PRA, Public Records Act request for all communication between Andrew Cantwell, Sarah Rudchenko and all Board members on all matters related to Board member Tabet, Specialized Support Services and BreeAnn Weist.
Two months later I received 705 pages, with many repetitive copies of what is posted on the district’s web site. There were a couple of hundred emails, not a single text.
I read all the emails. One email from Mrs. Cano. Most emails from Doctor Weissberg and President Pontzer-Kamkar. I learned you copy each other on emails. You work as a team.
I was surprised to learn at your last Board meeting there are emails and texts that were never disclosed.
One email dated June 4, the day you would later publicly disclose Tabet’s actions, Member Pontzer-Kamkar wrote to Andrew Cantwell and Emily Weisberg. In it she says, “I checked my texts with John and my conversation where he disclosed the minutes contract with Brianne and “money troubles” was on Feb. 21. I believe Em and I met with John the following Tuesday and I worked on this ethics draft”
Allow me to repeat; “John… disclosed the minutes contract with BreeAnne on February 21, 2025”.
How many times have you told us you knew nothing about former member Tabet’s actions. Your email tells us you knew back in February.
What possible attorney-client privilege exists to hide these emails and texts from the public?
Within hours of filing the first of four uniform complaints, which we just learned tonight your attorney has summarily dismissed, I was surprised to receive a response email from Doctor Weisberg; as she stated: “to bring clarity to this email.”
The first point she made was “our third-party investigators have full access to all Board member emails, texts, etc.”
Yet these emails and texts were not shared with the police investigator. Who decided not to share them and why?
She went on to say, “the email in question didn’t come up on my PRA search because it isn’t about Specialized Support Services.”
Yet this email mentions the clerical contract, the minutes contract and the name BreeAnne.
She then disclosed, “in this email Ms. Pontzer-Kamkar references a previous conversation she had with Dr. Paramo where he brought up Char’s “money trouble” and suggested he had hired Tabet’s daughter for a small amount of clerical work. Ms. Pontzer-Kamkar immediately shot down the idea and considered the issue closed.”
Under what authority can one or even two board members shoot something down in a private meeting and consider the issue closed? This is the very definition of bad governance.
Member Weiberg finished by saying she was sharing the truth in the hopes that the truth matters. Of course, the truth matters.
To summarize, you have confirmed, in writing, that on February 21 you learned about either the minutes contract with BreeAnne, or the hiring of Tabet’s daughter, to help Tabet.
Why didn’t either one of you bring this up at the next Board meeting to act on this, the way the law requires you to act?
Your website shows three checks to BreeAnne Weist for $15,000 each issued March 14, April 18, and May 14. If you had acted back in February or even March, you could have saved the district $45,000.
So, here we are eight months later, informed by lots of tedious research work from many concerned citizens, and we see how your failures of governance allowed Tabet to do what she did.
You can blame us all you want for bringing these issues to a Board meeting, blame the messenger, but your governance failures are the cause of unprecedented turmoil, abnormally high legal expenses, large settlements, and much more.
I wish I didn’t have to come to Board meetings, and if I had to be here, I wish it was to speak about the wonderful accomplishments of students and the good work of so many teachers and staff. But your poor governance overshadows it all.
Jef Vander Borght
Burbank
