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Tamar Galatzan, School Board member
LA Unified school board member Tamar Galatzan today filed a censure resolution with the board against its president, Richard Vladovic, a result of accusations that Vladovic verbally and sexually harassed district employees working for him.
The resolution, which Galatzan confirmed to LA School Report, now comes before the seven-member board at a regularly-scheduled meeting on Oct. 29. While members may decline to debate the issue, it will be open for public discussion at the meeting.
The earliest that a vote for censure would come is the board’s meeting on Nov. 12.
Galatzan’s action follows a fast-moving sequence of developments, starting with the district’s acknowledgement that an investigation into Vladovic’s past had been completed and partial results of two charges were released to the public. One case involved allegations of sexual harassment; the other, of verbal abuse.
While Vladovic has always denied the charges and issued a narrow public apology last week for his uncontrolled bad temper, the controversy surfaced again yesterday with a Los Angeles Daily News story in which his former secretary, Lily Nunez, identified herself as the sexual harassment victim in the investigators’ report.
Citing incidents that occurred between July 2000 and January 2003, when Vladovic was a local district superintendent, Nunez told the paper that Vladovic made sexually inappropriate remarks, told offensive jokes and used a sexual slur to describe a gay co-worker.
“I want to be the face for all those employees who have suffered because of him,” she told the paper. “I can’t let him do it to me again and do it to other people.”
Nunez is now executive assistant to Superintendent John Deasy but denied to the Daily News that he played any role in her decision to go public.
Mike Trujillo, a spokesman for Vladovic, called Galatzan’s action “a distraction, when, in fact, we should be focused on an iPad rollout that has enough holes in it to make a block of Swiss cheese blush.”
While the board met in private last week to discuss the investigators’ report, Galatzan is, so far, the only member to take any public action. She declined to comment on her censure resolution.
In effect, her resolution is a highly-visible public slap on the wrist, as if to convey a message that Vladovic’s behavior was entirely inappropriate. The censure resolution carries no other punitive action and does not affect his position as school board president.
*Updates with comment from Vladovic spokesman, Mike Trujillo.
Previous Posts: Vladovic Apologizes, Escapes Further Board Action — For Now; Board to Review Vladovic Charges in Closed Session; Vladovic Denies Sexual Harassment, Other Claims