Slatic promises to sue after Fresno school board refuses to lift trustee’s censure
Fresno Unified School District Trustee Terry Slatic on Wednesday promised to sue the school district he was elected to represent after the board refused to consider lifting his censure.
“This is exactly what I expected,” Slatic told The Bee later. “As I said in my statement (to the board) every judge wants to know that I tried to resolve this informally.”
The school board censured Slatic in August in connection with his role in multiple incidents at Bullard High. Formal investigations concluded Slatic violated board policies.
The censure prohibits Slatic from attending internal staff meetings and requires him to notify school administrators before visiting a campus. If Slatic does go to a school in the district, he needs to be with a chaperon.
The censure also removes Slatic from leadership and committee roles until he takes anger management classes, which Slatic has refused to do.
Slatic said the board doesn’t have the authority to require him to take anger management classes or censure him.
“You can’t treat any board member differently than any other without disenfranchising the constituents,” he said.
Fresno Unified School District Trustee Claudia Cazares said Slatic never specified how he wanted the censure changed and said Slatic’s request on Wednesday was only a perfunctory step toward a lawsuit.
“It goes in line with a series of threats and lawsuits that have been very apparent which I think is unbecoming of a trustee and it is not what we were voted in for,” Cazares said.
Four community members who spoke during public comment urged the board not to remove Slatics’s censure.
Jessica Mahoney urged the board make the censure tougher. “He’s cost the taxpayers money so I think the taxpayers should be on the (Censure) committee.”
Fresno Unified has spent more than $100,000 paying for investigations into his conduct in nearly the year that he’s been on the board.
Slatic’s threat to sue comes a week before he’s scheduled to fight another court battle in connection with one of the controversies that led to his censure. Slatic is demanding a teenage cheerleader shell out more than $10,000 to cover court costs Slatic racked up defending himself from a request for a restraining order.
The 16-year-old cheerleader accused Slatic of harassment when he interrupted a cheerleading practice on July 10 to defend two members of the squad who posted a blackface video online. The video created tension on the team and Slatic accused team members of bullying the two girls.
A Fresno County court commissioner ultimately determined Slatic’s actions that day did not constitute harassment. Slatic has called the restraining-order request frivolous and wants the girl to repay him for his legal troubles.
The teen’s attorney, Aida Macedo, said the Jan. 22 hearing marks the third time Slatic has demanded money from the cheerleader. The request has been denied twice before, she said.
This story was originally published January 15, 2020 at 11:26 PM.