School Trustee: Embarrassment or Model Parent?

Bennie Ford Matthews never imagined the scenario that would follow his election last November as a school board member.

With a razor-thin victory margin of 15 votes, the Imperial Beach resident took his seat in the South Bay Union School District, soon to be greeted by a local newspaper story questioning his use of “businessman” on his ballot statement because he receives welfare payments, at least according to documents sent anonymously to the newspaper.

Matthews, 41, married and the father of six children, has cited his right to privacy and refused to respond to the welfare allegations. But he filed a required economic interest statement for public officials, reporting no income more than $250 for the year before the election.

Matthews said his tax adviser believes his work as an artist and writer qualifies him as a businessman.

He then lambasted school Supt. Phil Grignon, and unnamed central office administrators and teachers, alleging they distributed the copies of the uncomplimentary news article throughout South Bay’s 12 schools, using district time and supplies. He demanded an investigation of what he called illegal political activity.

The dispute between Matthews and Grignon escalated when Grignon allegedly grabbed the trustee’s arm during a heated conversation about political malfeasance. Matthews filed an assault-and-battery charge with the district attorney’s office, which dismissed the complaint without an investigation based on statements made in the crime report filed by Matthews.

After Grignon then publicly ridiculed Matthews as an “embarrassment” during a board meeting--an action almost unprecedented by a superintendent toward one of his bosses--Matthews fired off a letter to the Office of Civil Rights, a division of the U.S. Department of Education. He charged racial harassment because he is black and accused fellow trustees, all of whom are white, of violating his civil rights.

Nevertheless, his fellow board members publicly censured Matthews last week--another extremely rare action at a school board setting. Several parents have begun the tedious legal process for recalling the embattled trustee. Two board members have called for Matthews to resign.

It has been a difficult couple of months for the small, majority Latino, heavily working-poor school district whose administrators and teachers have labored mightily and successfully to distinguish it academically from hundreds of other similar districts around the state. Many of those districts have been caught up in internecine board warfare over where to place blame for low test scores and the like.

Indeed, Grignon blames Matthews for the damage the controversy has done to South Bay’s reputation for excellence in management and academics. He is distressed at the lack of publicity for five students who took top honors in the 18th annual countywide elementary math field day competition, an almost unheard-of performance by students outside of San Diego city and North County.

But Matthews stands his ground, saying that all the charges leveled against him are malicious because they have nothing to do with his ability to perform as a school board member.

“I think the basic rationale is that it is discrimination,” Matthews said in an interview last week. “I am the only minority board member, and only black on the board . . . and the board may be uncomfortable having a (non-white) serving with them.” He accused Grignon of orchestrating the board’s censure.

He promises to press his charges of racism, though he admits that he “is still gathering information” to try and sustain the allegations already made. “I will follow wherever the trail leads,” Matthews added, speaking in the elliptic manner that has come to mark his responses to the accusations against him.

Matthews refused to talk about whether he receives welfare payments, saying only that he is “basically a writer and composer of music. . . . we are talking about production things, theatrical things . . . my college background is in philosophy.” (He is a 1979 graduate of Indiana State University in Terre Haute.)

Matthews, the only trustee with children now in South Bay schools, was strongly backed in the November election by the district’s teachers union, whose members have groused for years that Grignon sacrifices their self-esteem and advice on instruction in a single-minded pursuit of higher test scores and academic prowess. Union members wrote letters and posted campaign signs for Matthews.

“Why was I supported so strongly? Because parents were looking for someone who can see both sides of an issue, who will listen to everyone and not just” the superintendent, Matthews said.

South Bay teacher Dawn Dershem, who had three of Matthews’ children in her Harbor View school class, praised Matthews as “the kind of parent all schools want.

“The family always followed up on all homework, on all parent conferences, came to all school performances. . . . They were absolutely the most supportive you could find, just totally interested in all of their children . . . just lovely, lovely people.

“All of this is being blown out of proportion. . . . Bennie is sincere and honest in his concerns with children and parents. While I do not feel the other board members are racist, I do feel that there are racial undertones to all of this.”

Dershem said that, at her school, copies of the newspaper articles were copied, stapled together and placed on tables in the teachers’ workroom. “At other schools, they were put in Ziploc bags and placed on auto windshields,” she said.

“It was a concerted effort at every school by some people but whom I don’t know.”

Gwen Kruger is a neighbor of Matthews, and her family has attended the same church for several years.

“I’m starting to believe that this is racially motivated . . . because I feel Bennie has moral ethics and is qualified to be on the board and speak up for children and parents. . . . Why is everyone so upset at his listing himself” as a businessman because of being an artist-writer?

The teachers union president, Frank Cherry, said the organization continues to back Matthews. “It doesn’t make one bit of difference to me if he is on welfare, because he is a concerned parent, and we are in a low socioeconomic area, and I don’t think it makes a difference to a majority of people if he is on welfare.”

Matthews’ detractors deny any racial basis to their criticism.

“The racial charge cracks me up,” said parent Mary Carvajal, who is helping to organize a recall campaign. “I’m white, my husband is Mexican, and race has nothing to do with this, but it’s convenient for him to bring it up as a smoke screen.

“Mr. Matthews lied on his ballot statement when he said he was a businessman. He is on welfare. . . . This man has no grasp of what is going on in (a district) with a $43-million budget, and the teachers union is willing to sacrifice my kids and those of others in this district for Bennie Matthews.”

Another parent, Muriel Russell, said that “basically, what he did on his ballot statement calls into question his competence.” Russell, whose husband runs an independent trucking business, said “the public schools are the salvation” for her five children, and she doesn’t want “Bennie Matthews ruining a district that isn’t in a budget crisis and has its kids learning well.

“I don’t want to lose all of that (for a man) who misled voters.”

A former board member, Barbara Smith, is cited in Matthews’ letter regarding racism to the Office of Civil Rights. Matthews said that Smith, who is also black, resigned her position “because of negative publicity circulated by the school board.”

But Smith said this week that what Matthews wrote about her “is absolutely untrue. He chose my name because I am black, and I am very, very, very upset with him. He is totally incorrect.”

Two current board members, Brenda Latham and Alyce Arnold, believe Matthews should resign for the good of the district. The board president, Tom Teagle, said Matthews “did deceive” the public on the ballot. “I regret that this is not going to go away, and I think the district is in for more charges, for more ‘shooting from the hip,’ since apparently Mr. Matthews has plenty of time to do this.”

The four-member board (one position is vacant) called in an education professor from San Diego State University to moderate an all-day workshop Saturday to improve board members’ communication with one another.

“I’d like to see us try to get back into the business we were elected to do, to improve public education,” Teagle said. “It’s a shame what Bennie has brought upon himself and the district at this point.”

For Matthews, there are no regrets. “I’d do it all over again, I stand behind my statement. People will have their own individual perceptions.”