Contained within:
"Concerning" Policy Changes
The Lawsuit
The fight against the Superintendent
The fight against the Public
The contract between Douglas County School Board and the Joey Gilbert Law firm will end next week following his termination-turned-resignation announcement during last month’s board meeting.
Since August 2023, Douglas County School District has paid the firm $437,204.17 over what proved to be one of the district’s most chaotic and financially disastrous years.
The yearly budget for the former board counsel, which served the district for over twenty years, was only $160,000.
Gilbert in his resignation letter blamed the community for his increased workload and subsequent high cost to the district, and said now that he has “executed the changes he was hired to implement … it is the right time for me to step aside.”
Gilbert’s hiring was a controversial one in the beginning, and continued to stack up controversies as the months wore on.
These boiled over in a contentious lawsuit filed by four Douglas County residents where it was revealed trustees had signed affidavits they admittedly did not read, sent to them by Gilbert without explanation, in which they swore they’d searched their own personal devices during a public record’s request and found nothing to provide.
However, testimony during trial revealed trustees had actually given their devices to Gilbert to search, and Gilbert told petitioners trustees conducted the search themselves with nothing to find despite his firm having completed the search, and despite thousands of pages of pertinent messages and documents existing on both DCSD servers and trustees’ personal devices.
This statement produced by Gilbert ultimately led the trustees and the district into the expensive and time-consuming lawsuit which is still ongoing.
Trustees fought tooth and nail against the records request until they learned they can personally be held liable for attorney’s fees and costs.
Gilbert and his firm also had no background in educational law when they were selected to serve as district counsel, which was a sticking point with both members of the public, and minority members of the board.
However, Gilbert’s hiring was decided long before the board majority even took office. In documents pulled from a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) records request, it was revealed that board members Susan Jansen, Katherine Dickerson, David Burns, and Doug Englekirk conspired with financial benefactors and outside entities to fire the longstanding counsel in favor of hiring Gilbert.
To the public, the board majority said they were firing the previous law firm, Maupin, Cox and Legoy, because they’d cautioned the board against adopting a policy banning transgender students from school sports, as it would lead to a costly lawsuit that the district would not win.
On hiring Gilbert, they said they were doing so specifically because he would “fight for them” to take on this policy, and report to the board instead of the superintendent.
However, that policy never came to light. In fact, the majority of policy changes that appear to have come from the new board majority and Gilbert were ones that directly benefited Gilbert financially, or were initiated allegedly to keep unlawful board communications a secret amidst an ongoing lawsuit.
“Concerning” Policy Changes
First, within his contract they increased the pay offered to Gilbert both on his hourly fee and his retainer, and applied the same charge to a non-attorney member of his team who conducted the majority of the firm’s work during the first few months, instead of Gilbert himself.
The first month, Gilbert charged the board $35,781.75, a majority of which was spent on phone calls and communications initiated by members of the board, none of which were covered by the $7,500 retainer according to the September 2023 meeting agenda.
Minority board members also accused the firm of charging the district to teach themselves educational and open meeting laws, something district counsel should have already known, they argued.
During the second month, the board majority and Gilbert also put forth a number of “concerning” policy proposals, most of which had been enacted by the previous board, which included:
- Removing the requirement that board members do not disclose private or confidential information that relates to district employees or students
- Removing a requirement that board members must “resist every temptation and outside pressure to use their position as a school board member to benefit either themselves or any other individual agency apart from the total interest of the school jurisdiction”
- Removing the phrase that board members are expected to receive complaints and should assure community members their complaint is acknowledged and understood
- Allowing board members to place items on the agenda without the approval of the superintendent and without a majority in agreement
- Removing the ability to postpone voting on an agenda item if more information is required
- Removing the phrase that trustees must commit to “working with fellow board members in a spirit of harmony and cooperation in spite of differences of opinion.”
- Removing the phrase that if a board member has a dispute they should try to resolve it
- Removing the phrase that board members will be prepared and open minded when speaking to issues on the agenda and should seek to understand all sides of a topic
- Removing a policy that requires full board approval for board member information requests by district staff that would require staff to create reports, projects or compile information that would require more than a half hour of staff time
- Removing the requirement that board members should support employees in the proper performance of their duties with respect and consideration due skilled professionals and strive for a positive working relationship with the superintendent
- Removing the requirement that board members should be informed on education issues that regularly come before the board
- Establishing a requirement that board members must support the decision of the board majority both publicly and privately and removes the ability of a member to “retain the right to seek changes in decisions through ethical and constructive channels.”
- How to handle board elections which was updated for the first time since 2014 in 2021
- Removing state law imposed requirements to hold a professional development workshop every other year for the board
- Removing the requirement that members are obligated to abide by the majority decisions of the board
- and many other policy changes that are specifically against state law.
The Lawsuit
After the very first meeting following the board majority taking over in January 2023, public records requests began coming in.
Attendees were convinced, based on the actions taken by Trustees Jansen, Burns, Dickerson and Englekirk, the four members knowingly violated open meeting law by coordinating with each other prior to the public meeting.
During board elections, it appeared the board members already knew who they would be electing to each position prior to discussion.
This was further supported by the fact that Burns brought a clerk’s bell to the meeting in anticipation of his new position of Board Clerk, despite not having been elected to the position yet.
The records request submitted the next day asked for all written communications between the four trustees between November 8, 2022 and January 11, 2023.
That request, initially handled by former Superintendent Keith Lewis and the board’s previous counsel, returned a number of emails between the four trustees, and Douglas County residents Virginia Starrett, Jan and Lynn Muzzy, and Nicholas Maier.
In these emails, trustee financial backer Maier, who contributed over $57,000 to the Nevada 1st PAC to support Burns, Jansen and Dickerson in their campaigns, gave tasks to individual trustees and instructed them on how to vote for a number of topics – including the hiring of Gilbert.
Following another trustee meeting in May in which it appeared the four members were coordinating outside the public’s eye once again – including texting each other during the meeting itself – another slew of records requests were submitted.
This time, however, trustees Jansen, Dickerson and Burns did not provide their private texts and emails to their former counsel, who told petitioners they’d be answered by July 31.
Instead, the board majority fired their legal counsel on July 19, and voted to hire Gilbert as new counsel without considering any other law firms. The July 31 deadline came and went.
Then, on Aug. 3, Gilbert responded to say that Jansen and Burns had searched their own emails and texts and didn’t find anything else pertaining to the requests.
Petitioners alleged the trustees asked their previous counsel for more time before turning over their devices so they could fire them and hire Gilbert before the deadline, especially given prior counsel specifically told trustees they had not produced the documents they needed to, which had already proven to exist, and were likely to be sued because of it.
In the lawsuit, petitioners requested the court order trustees to turn over their devices to be searched for the public records sought by the original request, and to find that Jansen, Burns and DCSD violated the law and must pay civil penalties associated with the violations, along with attorneys fees.
During court proceedings which began March 2024 (nearly a year after the May 2023 records requests were filed), former-Superintendent Lewis testified he’d never been given the records request, and only learned of it while being subpoenaed by the court. He said to his knowledge, Gilbert and/or the district never conducted a servers search in an effort to locate documents for petitioners. He said if a search was conducted, those documents would have been located.
Jansen’s testimony was “inconsistent” and “riddled with answers to the effect of, ‘I don’t know,’ ‘I don’t remember,’ and ‘if you say so,'” according to the ruling.
Her testimony proved her and the other respondents’ failure to produce documents, demonstrated by the fact multiple emails produced by other trustees were sent from or to Jansen which had not been produced by Jansen herself.
Jansen said she would have agreed to the search sooner “if she had been asked nicely and kindly,” (neither of which are requirements of NPRA requests)
Excerpt from October 10, 2024 ruling
Following witness testimony, trustees and Gilbert agreed to a settlement, including the searches of their devices and payment of the attorneys fees by DCSD. However, the board ultimately voted not to approve the settlement in May 2024, and asked Gilbert to negotiate “a more favorable term for the district.” Trial was scheduled to resume in June.
DCSD then asked for a continuance and offered to conduct a forensic search of the servers and trustees’ devices at DCSD’s expense, and the court granted the continuance, stating DCSD did not need a court order or settlement agreement to produce the records, and “nothing the court or petitioners have done … has prevented [DCSD] from previously conducting the very searches that they now desire to perform.”
Trustees turn against Gilbert
Trial resumed again on September 17, 2024, and this time, the district was represented by new counsel, and the four trustees retained independent counsel to represent them together.
During a search of the servers and personal devices, DCSD produced approximately 500 pages worth of public records, and trustees produced approximately 6,100 pages of public records, over a year after the records request had been submitted.
After these documents were produced, the court recalled trustees for more questioning, and each of them “unabashedly claimed good faith reliance on the legal advice of Joey Gilbert Law” and stated they’d given Gilbert their personal devices to be searched.
This was despite each trustee having signed sworn affidavits stating they themselves had searched their own devices and produced all responsive documents.
They said Gilbert had forwarded the affidavits without any explanation or discussion, and all had signed “without much thought or consideration.” This was backed up by Superintendent Lewis, who said after Gilbert sent him the affidavit with no explanation, he read it carefully and refused to sign it unless “factual inaccuracies” were corrected.
Amber Kammann, former paralegal for Joey Gilbert Law corroborated the new testimony, stating that Jansen, Burns and Dickerson had handed over their personal devices to the firm. Kammann said she searched the devices using a list of search terms supplied by Gilbert, and returned the devices to trustees.
Gilbert chose not to testify.
Judge Thomas Gregory ultimately ruled in favor of the petitioners.
In the ruling, Judge Gregory seemed to find the actions of the trustees and Gilbert to be bizarre, if not outright indicative they’d known they were breaking the law:
“Trustees were informed … their productions were clearly deficient and the failure to remedy would draw a legit lawsuit and responsibility for attorneys fees … Nonetheless, for some incomprehensible reason, DCSD and Trustees refused to conduct supplemental searches while maintaining that no additional responsive documents existed … DCSD’s and Trustees’ conduct after being served with the lawsuit is also telling. Instead of quickly conducting supplemental searches to prove their claim that no further records existed, DCSD and Trustees doubled down and … continued to maintain this position until after the second witness testified at trial. Even then, DCSD and Trustees inexplicably delayed conducting the searches for another couple of months. The court finds that the lawsuit caused a substantial change in DCSD’s and Trustees’ behavior in the manner sought by Petitioners.”
At this time, the lawsuit is still working its way through the court, so it’s not known at this time how much more money the district will need to dole out to the petitioners.
However, the ruling states: “Nevada Public Records Act loudly and clearly demonstrates that when it comes to public records, the Nevada Legislature means business … Governmental entities [including trustees] had best understand the construct of NPRA and the need for swift and full compliance.”
It would have cost DCSD and trustees “next to nothing” to search their servers and personal devices pre-lawsuit and even after the lawsuit was filed, the ruling continued, but they still refused to conduct “simple searches” to prove their claims the documents did not exist.
Several trustees testified they ultimately agreed to the search because they wanted attorneys’ fees to stop after it was determined they’d personally be liable to pay them, according to the ruling.
Burns said he “would have agreed to the search” without the lawsuit, but ultimately agreed to it because attorney’s fees became a concern and he “wanted the lawsuit to stop,” according to the ruling.
Englekirk said he originally objected to the search because he felt “pestered” to produce records that didn’t exist, or that he felt were not damning “(neither of which are grounds to ignore public records requests),” the ruling states. He said he changed his mind when he became aware of attorney’s fees and costs.
Jansen said she would have agreed to the search sooner “if she had been asked nicely and kindly, (neither of which are requirements of NPRA requests),” the ruling stated. However, former counsel testified Jansen had said, “I will never give up my cell phone,” a comment which Jansen acknowledged making during proceedings.
On September 18, 2024 Dickerson testified she learned of the lawsuit only the day before and would have consented to the search even without the lawsuit. The lawsuit was personally served to Dickerson on September 3, 2023, and she was present at court when trial began in March 2024, six months after being served.
However, the court did not blindly side with petitioners. It said petitioners “raced to the courthouse” following the second records request before the expiration of the second records request deadline, and the petitioners had not extended “common courtesy” for the circumstances which included the newly elected status of the trustees, Burns being out of state for an extended period of time, the changing of the superintendent, the change of legal counsel, and missing the initial deadline by only one day.
Still, the court ruled that petitioners were entitled to the records well before July 2024, and said: “While petitioners may have been quick to court, their lawsuit was not frivolous and DCSD and Trustees cannot blame Petitioners for the ensuing extraordinary delay in producing responsive public records.”
The ruling did not specify how much the petitioners are entitled to, but instead, stated petitioners are entitled to recover from DCSD and each individually named trustee their “costs and reasonable attorneys fees in the proceeding.”
The fight against the Superintendent
The biggest issue the board majority took on publicly was to limit the powers of the superintendent. For a school board, in business terms, the Superintendent acts as the board’s Executive Director. They take care of the day-to-day management of the school district, while the board focuses on big picture issues, budgets, guiding principles, and overall goals.
However, the board majority was determined to get rid of Superintendent Lewis, and hire a new superintendent who would “work for the board” according to emails recovered from the FOIA request.
The ways the board sought to limit powers of the superintendent included:
- Disallowing the superintendent to bring forth agenda items suggested by the public;
- Requiring all communications between the district and parents, students, and members of the community be approved by the board; and,
- Taking public records requests out of the superintendent’s hands.
The last item is arguably the most important in terms of cost. Previously, and in most school districts, records requests went to the superintendent, who would retrieve documents as a part of their normal duties.
Instead, the board removed this duty from the superintendent, and gave it to Joey Gilbert and his firm, who then charged $325 per hour to review and answer requests.
At the same time, a policy was put forth to require the public pay $0.50 per page for requested documents, an amount that might be considered illegal under Nevada state law.
It was later revealed by the Record Courier the financial backer of the board majority, Nicholas Maier (who also was part of conversations sought by the petitioner’s FOIA), requested over 30,000 pages in a public record’s request between June 1 and Nov. 15, 2023.
None of those records could be released until Gilbert was able to look them over — and charge his per hour fee while doing so.
The board attempted to fire Superintendent Lewis, which was thwarted in a surprising vote after Englekirk went against the board majority to vote against his termination. However, the damage was done, and Lewis resigned soon after following his 30+ years of service to the district.
The fight against the Public
Other policy changes were focused on limiting when and how long the public could speak after community members continued attending school board meetings to voice their opposition.
The vast majority of Nevada’s school boards allow for three minutes of public comment. After facing significant opposition, the board initially shortened the public comment limit to two minutes, and then later, to 90 seconds per speaker. Comment was also limited to the beginning and end of the meeting, instead of before each item.
However, Gilbert and then-president Burns said Burns could “do what he wanted” with public comment time, and a writer of an online publication was allowed nine full minutes to speak before the general public. Jansen said she had called the woman to “investigate comments” made about the board’s pick for superintendent.
Over the course of her nine minutes, the writer said she “could find no evidence of a criminal background” on the candidate the board had selected, despite multiple news stories across several cities, a grand jury, and a special audit report backing the arrest reports and mismanagement history of the candidate.
Burns then told members of the public they could be sued if they gave public comment about the candidate with “unproven information.”
At the end of that meeting, the board ultimately voted to deny offering the candidate the contract, despite already selecting him for the position.
Contentions continued between members of the board and the public, namely through Trustee Jansen.
In a “hot mic” situation, in which Jansen appeared to have believed her microphone was turned off, she called two members of the public a “piece of shit.”
Later, Jansen again denigrated a number of public commenters attending the meeting in opposition to Gilbert by calling them “retarded.” This term was one Jansen used often, according to former-Superintendent Lewis, who said during public comment that as an educator and the father of special needs children, he was “disappointed and repulsed” by her use of the word, and had already asked her not to use it on a number of occasions.
During that meeting, Gilbert refused to answer direct legal questions by both members of the public as well as board members themselves, who asked him a number of questions relating to educational and open meeting laws.
After that meeting, it was revealed that Gilbert was repeatedly posting on Twitter during multiple meetings, after he could be seen (and was called out by the public for) scrolling on his phone during meetings.
Total numbers accrued
Gilbert and his firm invoiced the most amount of money during his first year with the district, with the highest monthly bills totaling:
- $74,056.60 (October 2023)
- $40,326.61 (December 2023
- $39,958.11 (January 2024)
- $35,781.75 (September 2023)
- $32,618.61 (February 2024)
- $31,521.50 (March 2024)
In the last five months before his termination / resignation, (August 2024 – December 2024), invoices had dwindled to an average of around $10,500 per month according to financial documents included at each school board meeting.
In total, Gilbert’s firm has invoiced the district for $437,204.17 since his first bill in September 2023, a number confirmed by the district.
In the first several months, it was determined Gilbert had been charging the district for work done on top of his retainer, instead of against his retainer. Meaning, Gilbert was hired to do his work for $7,500 a month, and once that number had been met, could charge a per hour fee of $325 after that.
Instead, Gilbert was charging the district $7,500 per month, and charging an additional $325 per hour for all of his hours worked.
Once this was reveled, Gilbert’s firm stated they would return the incorrectly billed funds. District staff confirmed they received a refund of $7,197.78 from the firm.
Gilbert’s last day with the district is January 9, marking the end to his 16 month, often chaotic contract with the board.
