Trustees Sue Fired Superintendent

School officials in Laguna Beach are countersuing former superintendent Reed S. Montgomery, alleging that he was incapable of running the district.

Montgomery sued the Laguna Beach Unified School District after it fired him in February. In its countersuit alleging breach of contract, the district for the first time lays out its dissatisfaction with the man who headed the schools for just seven months.

Montgomery couldn’t draft or implement school policy, or even tackle the mundane tasks of writing memos free of spelling and grammatical errors, according to letters filed with the countersuit in Orange County Superior Court.

The suit also alleges that the former superintendent showed no understanding of the biggest issue facing the district last year--whether to enroll students projected from development along Newport Coast--and that he failed to inform officials that a $7-million lawsuit had been filed against the district by the family of a special-education student.

Montgomery canceled meetings on short notice, did not return telephone calls to board members, and could not prepare meeting agendas and board memos on time and “with the basic writing competency expected of a high-level educational leader,” according to the court documents.

Montgomery, 51, could not be reached for comment Tuesday. His lawyer, Patricia Barrett, said she doesn’t believe that the accusations, which were revealed to Montgomery before his firing, are true. “I didn’t at the time and I don’t now,” she said.

But the lawsuit, which includes a 32-point list of allegations of failed leadership and subpar performance, does not divulge the mystery that kept the Laguna Beach school community gossiping for weeks: the nature of Montgomery’s illness that prompted him to leave his office in December 1997 and never return.

That’s when his stormy relationship with the school board became public. Montgomery last worked in Laguna on Dec. 5. He has said publicly he was suffering from internal bleeding, but the lawsuit alleges he told school board member Steven Rabago that he was “mentally and physically exhausted.”

Montgomery requested a paid medical leave for a month, promising to return to the 2,500-student district on Jan. 1. Board members denied his request twice, saying that they lacked sufficient medical information to prove he was ill. They also stopped him from returning to work in January, placing Montgomery on paid administrative leave pending a physical examination by a board-appointed doctor.

But when he showed up at the office of Dr. Jonathon Greenberger on Jan. 7, Montgomery’s demeanor “intimidated” the doctor, according to the legal documents. He “was so confrontational and threatening . . . that Dr. Greenberger declined to medically examine” him.

There were hints of trouble about Montgomery’s performance beginning shortly after he started last July.

In the seven months Montgomery led the district, school board members met with him seven times behind closed doors to discuss his performance. But court records allege that Montgomery was unable to create an evaluation format, prioritize goals or articulate how to achieve them, even after the district sent him to a planning seminar in November 1997.

Ironically, Montgomery was hired in April 1997 to restore stability to an ailing district. A financial crisis in 1996 resulted in a 5% salary cut to all employees and forced the once-popular Supt. Paul M. Possemato to retire early. The district business manager, Terry Bustillos, was fired.

Dennis Haryung, president of the Laguna Beach Unified Faculty Assn., said he had a “pretty good relationship with” Montgomery, but said he could not evaluate how well the former superintendent performed on the job.

“In my opinion, he wasn’t around long enough for anyone to assess that,” Haryung said.

Theresa O’Hare, a parent who is active in school issues, said she hopes the district has made the right financial move by filing a countersuit.

“The district’s been so closed-mouthed about this, it’s been hard to get a handle on it,” she said.

Montgomery sued the school board in May, three months after his firing. The suit alleges that the board broke its contract with him, disclosed confidential medical information, violated his right to privacy and damaged his reputation by publicly making false, negative comments about him.

Depositions in the matter are not expected to begin until after the first of the year, said Barrett, Montgomery’s lawyer. She said she had no idea when a trial could begin.

She said Montgomery is searching for a job as a school superintendent but has not been hired because of his firing. A former superintendent in San Bernardino and Los Angeles counties, Montgomery is working on a commission-only basis in a field related to education, Barrett said, but she did not know more details about his work.

His successor Theresa Daem, a former San Bruno, Calif., superintendent, began working in Laguna in early July.