A Sacramento school trustee walked out of a hotel with a vase. Now she’s reprimanded by board

A Sacramento school board member was reprimanded by her colleagues Monday and ordered to undergo ethics training after a Southern California hotel employee accused her of trying to steal a decorative red vase from the hotel lobby.

The Natomas Unified School District held a special meeting Monday to address the hospitality worker’s complaint about Trustee Ericka Harden, marking the second time in 15 months she faced formal scrutiny as a board member.

Harden was filmed Aug. 20 on security cameras at Embassy Suites in Ontario, where she was attending a district-funded education leadership conference. On the 13-second video that hotel management sent the school district, Harden is seen walking out of the hotel with the vase.

The video, which was edited and does not show the complete interaction, then cuts to an employee holding the vase as Harden appears to walk toward the parking lot.

“This is to inform you of the altercation that has been encountered with your employee,” a hotel worker emailed the district, describing a confrontational Harden upset about the state of her room. “The vase was returned as I did have to pull it out of her hands.”

Harden contested the hotel employee’s account and described a very different scenario.

After a frustrating stay in dirty rooms — hair on the towels, food on the sofa, toenail clippings in the bed — Harden said she spotted the vase by the elevators and thought it looked like one a relative owned. She said she wanted to show it to her sister, who she said was sitting outside the hotel lobby. Harden’s phone was dead, though, and she couldn’t take a photo. So, she said she talked to the front desk worker, left her driver’s license behind as collateral, and stepped out to show off the piece.

That’s when, according to Harden, someone followed her to the door and told her she had to return it. Harden said it was hotel management telling her that the staff member was wrong and that she couldn’t walk outside with hotel decor.

The competing versions of what happened with the vase were only the beginning.

In the days after her hotel stay, Harden — who had embarked on a cruise near Catalina Island — said she took a call from Superintendent Chris Evans. She told him that she had not taken the vase out of the hotel at all.

That inconsistency, coupled with concerns about how she represented the district while at a taxpayer-funded training event, was at the heart of Monday’s hastily called meeting.

“I have concerns about the veracity of truthfulness,” Trustee Lisa Kaplan said. “It doesn’t look good.”

Hotel ignores follow-up questions

In addition to a verbal reprimand, the school board voted 4 to 1 to prohibit Harden from holding any board leadership position until she completes ethics, school board and a Masters in Governance training.

Once all of the training is completed — possibly by December — Harden will be eligible for a leadership position on the board.

Kaplan was the lone ‘no’ vote to ensure Harden could not hold leadership positions until Jan. 2023.

Ahead of Monday’s meeting, Evans called the hotel three times to try to get more information about the dispute. On Saturday, a hotel employee said the person who notified the district about the vase incident would be back on Sunday. On Sunday, Evans was told the employee would be out for a while longer. And Monday, Evans talked to the manager, who had been aware of the vase incident but who also had not been working when it happened.

Hotel managers did not send any other video, and they told the district it was possible other cameras didn’t record any part of the incident.

“At no time was there any intent on stealing a vase,” Harden said. “I’m quite aware of what stealing gets you.”

“A thief is one thing I am not.”

Second hearing on Sacramento trustee

The special meeting came 15 months after Harden resigned a leadership position on the board while under an intensifying state investigation for allegedly defrauding the district of $16,000.

For more than four years, the California Department of Consumer Affairs had been looking into claims that Harden received district money for speech services she never performed, according to records The Sacramento Bee reviewed.

That case began in 2016 when an employee filed a complaint “regarding questions of potential impropriety” about Harden, who has long held a valid speech therapy license. In January 2017, a district official became wary of documentation and invoices for therapy services bearing Harden’s name that omitted her registration number. Later that year, the Department of Consumer Affairs cited Harden with a $1,000 fine for not providing documents and not cooperating with an investigation, state records show.

An investigation into the school district billing dragged on for years. It took a major step forward when a state investigator in December 2020 subpoenaed hundreds of pages of receipts, bank records and emails — mere weeks after Harden narrowly won her seat on the board.

Harden at the time said she was innocent of the allegations and that someone “made up” the invoices using her name. She said she had never done anything illegal involving the district or with her speech services, that she was cooperating with investigators, and that the claims for reimbursement were fraudulent.

The state’s Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology and Hearing Aid Dispensers Board dropped its investigation last fall, finding “insufficient evidence” to press forward.

Harden took the state’s closing of the case as proof of her innocence.

School board veterans on trustee

Still, that investigation loomed over Monday’s special meeting.

“In 22 years, I’ve never had to come back and discuss the role of a trustee twice within a year,” said Susan Heredia, a board member and president of the California School Board Association. “I’ve never had to address the inappropriate behavior of a trustee in that time frame.”

Kaplan said the incident with the hotel vase coupled with the state’s fraud investigation were evidence of Harden’s “moral turpitude.”

Kaplan said she agreed with verbally reprimanding Harden and requiring her to undergo ethics and trustee training. But she wanted Harden barred from holding leadership positions next year.

“I think we owe the public to hold ourselves accountable,” Kaplan said. “Hold ourselves to a higher standard, model behavior for our children. Model behavior to our employees.”

This story was originally published August 30, 2022 at 5:25 AM.