New Union-Tribune investigation raises a startling question — Why did Trustees Kelly, Shield, Woods, and Eckert hire a Chief of Staff disciplined for using racist and sexist slurs as a special ed teacher?

May 14, 2025 —

For months, East County parents and community members have taken to the microphone at school board meetings with a question for Grossmont Union High School District (GUHSD) leadership.

Why would the GUHSD Trustees create a costly new “Chief of Staff” position amid what they describe as a dire budget situation?

Community members have also asked why the Trustees hired a former GUHSD employee named Jerry Hobbs for the Chief of Staff position. Nothing about this hiring made sense. The Trustees voted to waive the district own Board bylaws and hire Hobbs without ever advertising the positions, reviewing applications, or conducting job interviews.

Read: Trustees spent public funds on new hire—but left taxpayers in the dark.

Adding to the confusion was the fact that Hobbs had previously resigned from the district following an investigation into his potential misconduct as a teacher. Why would the Trustees bring Hobbs back to serve in a leadership position?

Now our community finally has some answers.

Hobbs was investigated for “immoral” conduct and offensive behavior toward students and colleagues

Thanks to a public record request submitted by the San Diego Union-Tribune reporters, we now know the details of the 2018 misconduct investigation.

As the Union-Tribune reports, the investigation by GUHSD found that Hobbs “engaged in ongoing immoral conduct” and repeatedly made offensive racist and sexist statements while teaching special education students at GUHSD’s REACH Academy.

According to the Union Tribune, “The investigation found he had used racial slurs including the N-word and made comments like ‘You are my favorite Black kid,’ ‘You are a woman, you should wash my dishes’ and ‘Now that Trump is president, I’m going to send you back to Africa.’”

Read the Union-Tribune article here: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2025/05/13/years-before-grossmont-hired-him-as-a-top-administrator-he-was-disciplined-for-racial-slurs-sexism/

The 2018 investigation into Hobbs is detailed in this 10-page “Statement of Charges:” https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25941078-statement-of-charges/

This behavior was unacceptable—and illegal. The investigation concluded that Hobbs appeared to have violated both GUHSD governing board regulations and state laws related to the CA Education Code.

Based on this investigation, the district’s head of human resources, Julie Mottershaw, concluded that Hobbs was “not fit to teach” and recommended first suspending him and then firing him. The Trustees agreed with that recommendation. Hobbs resigned the next day.

So how did Hobbs end up back on the GUHSD payroll in 2025?

JW Howard Attorneys gets involved

On May 7, 2025, reporting from the Voice of San Diego revealed that Hobbs was allowed to draft his own settlement with the district. In the settlement, Hobbs wrote that he should be made eligible for district rehire in a leadership position. Hobbs drafted this settlement while employed by a law firm called JW Howard Attorneys.

You can read the Voice of San Diego article here.

The relationship between JW Howard Attorneys and GUHSD is extremely unusual. In 2022, law firm owner John Howard donated thousands to the joint Kelly, Shield, and Woods campaign. Less than a year after receiving that money, the same Trustees approved a service contract with JW Howard Attorneys to conduct “employee investigations.”

Read: Trustees pay GUHSD funds to major campaign donor

JW Howard Attorneys did not conduct the original investigation into Hobbs. The law firm was instead brought in after Hobbs’ resignation to investigate Hobbs’ former supervisor. In a leaked memo, GUHSD Trustee Kelly personally recommended that Hobbs join JW Howard Attorneys. Kelly said Hobbs “could be particularly helpful” for the investigation.

JW Howard Attorneys received more than $600,000 in school funds from GUHSD during the period of this investigation. As a researcher on that investigation, Hobbs’ himself found that he was innocent of any misconduct noted in the 2018 statement. At the same time, Hobbs was asked to draft his own settlement with the district.

According to Voice of San Diego:

“The final version of the settlement opened the door for Hobbs’ rehiring at Grossmont in ‘any position or assignment for which he is qualified.’ It also sealed the investigation into Hobbs conducted in spring 2018 and added stipulations to the circumstances of his resignation.”

Trustees had a chance to do the right thing — and they failed

In December 2024, despite knowing Hobbs’ history with the district, four of the GUHSD Trustees voted to rehire him in an administrative position titled “Director I, Student and Family Engagement, Learning and Innovation.” No other candidates were given an opportunity to apply for this job. No one was interviewed.

Then in February 2025, Kelly, Shield, Woods, and Eckert voted for Hobbs to serve as Chief of Staff, a brand new position in the school board. As community members pointed out, many school districts do not have a Chief of Staff. In fact, the Chief of Staff job description overlapped significantly with job duties already handled by the district superintendent.

In both hiring instances, these four Trustees voted to waive the district’s own Board bylaws and hire Hobbs without ever advertising the positions, reviewing applications, or conducting job interviews. The only Board Member who opposed this shady hiring process was Trustee Chris Fite.

Fite told Voice of San Diego that he has questioned this hiring and other recent Board decisions. “I’m concerned that there may be a conflict of interest. It seems at the very least that this process was rushed and totally untransparent.”

Trustees pay Hobbs big bucks to resign

East County parents and teachers opposed Hobbs’ rehiring from the beginning. The cost of his position, and the Board’s secretive hiring process, was raised during public comments at multiple Board meetings between February 2025 and May 2025.

Kelly, Shield, Woods, and Eckert neglected constituent concerns—until local media put a spotlight on their own behavior.

The Voice of San Diego article was published on May 7, 2025. The very next day, the Trustees met in closed session to discuss Hobbs’ position. They decided that Hobbs should be given one year’s salary, a payout of $186,878.75, for signing a resignation agreement.

The Union-Tribune has now made this resignation agreement public. You can read it here: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25941075-hobbs-resignation-and-general-release-5-7-25/

Further grounds for a recall

Hobbs’ behavior described in the 2018 disciplinary statement is horrifying. The Trustees should never have rehired Hobbs, and they should never have waived common sense hiring practices to give Hobbs a leadership position.

Trustees Jim Kelly, Rob Shield, Gary C. Woods, and Scott Eckert showed bad judgement. Their actions came with a cost for taxpayers. Hobbs is finally leaving the district for good, but he’s taking $186,878.75 in school funds with him.

This failure of leadership has harmed our students and our schools. We must recall Kelly, Shield, Woods, and Eckert.

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