Grant payout plan's origin cloudy

It's hard to tell how a controversial $2.5 million severance package for Grant Joint Union High School District managers came to be.

The account offered by the district's lawyer differs from the one given by a school board member and a fiscal adviser who allegedly created the plan.

Grant board members put the severance plan on hold last month after county schools Superintendent David Gordon said it could be illegal.

His staff is investigating whether the plan was developed by administrators who stand to benefit from it. That would be a conflict of interest, Gordon said.

Grant officials dispute that would be a conflict but say it didn't happen in this case.

Tonight, in closed session, Grant trustees are scheduled to discuss the severance plan. They are not expected to take any action.

Bruce Mangerich, a retired Grant administrator who continues to work for the district as a part-time fiscal adviser, said in an interview that he came up with the buyout plan.

"I was reacting to the political situation on the ground and the real fears of managers in the district," he said.

After the November election, when voters decided to merge Grant and three of its feeder elementary districts, Grant administrators were concerned about how they would fare in the new merged district, Mangerich said. "A lot of people talked to me about their fears."

So Mangerich decided to come up with a plan to buy them out of their contracts as an alternative to working for the merged district, he said. He did it on his own, he said, without being directed by the school board or anyone else.

"It was 2 o'clock in the morning when I wrote it," said. "I was thinking about it and I just had to get up and put it on paper."

Mangerich is not on the list of administrators in line to receive the buyouts, which range from $104,285 to $257,562.

His plan went through few revisions before the school board saw it on Dec. 19, he said.

Mangerich was out of town that night, so Grant's outside legal firm – Kronick, Moskovitz, Tiedemann & Girard – presented his plan to the trustees, school board member Patrick Kemp said.

"We wanted to bring in outside counsel because it should be done by outside counsel," Kemp said.

As for the creation of the plan, Kemp said, "we never directed staff to go out and do this … I don't believe anybody on the board directed anyone to do anything. It came to us from Bruce through Kronick."

That's not the way Grant's longtime attorney, Jacques Whitfield, said the buyout plan was created.

In a closed meeting in early December, Whitfield said, the school board told Mangerich and Pat Newsome, Grant's superintendent, to come up with a plan for offering severance packages to top managers.

"It was a simple direction from the board," Whitfield said.

Newsome and Whitfield are among the 14 managers who have opted to participate in the severance plan. Newsome is in line to receive $257,562 and Whitfield is to receive $229,350.

Gordon, the county superintendent, said he has asked the Grant district for evidence showing how – and by whom – the buyout plan was created.

"Are there records of meetings where someone – the board or whoever – instructed (Mangerich) on the parameters of the buyout plan? There must have been some direction for doing it," Gordon said.

"Who met with all the employees? Who put all that together? We just want to examine the record. And since it didn't transpire at all in any kind of public meeting, what was the discussion in closed session when they approved it?"

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