It drives me crazy that this sort of money is being wasted meanwhile I was asked for 100's and even 1000's of dollars in "donations" as I completed the walk through enrollment for my 2 kids.

District please get some professional help to curtail the huge amount you are spending on legal fees. It's taking dollars away from the education of our kids.

Parents, we are enabling this reckless spending by the district every time we make a donation. I am convinced the deep pockets of parents in this community contributes to the fact the district doesn't always spend money wisely.

Hopefully with the exit of the Superintendent and HR person we will be able to hire professionals who are able to effectively deal with situations before it becomes a bottomless pit of cash to lawfirms.

Spend money on education not on lawyers.

It is a shame that the APT Union and the previous superintendent has destroyed the educational opportunities for pupils based on their endless vendetta against a principal. The pusd needs to admit it was wrong fire the attorneys sue the previous superintendent for incompetence and the law firm for malpractice and move on.

So, Don, your answer to this money/legal fees problem is to start at least two more lawsuits? Interesting.

The only way to see if these legal fees are out of line is to know what are typical fees paid by districts. Every district pays fees to a law firm or firms (regular part of the budget), but is this a typical amount? Let's not speculate on how much over the average we are paying if we don't know the average. I have no idea where to even start looking for this information.

GtF, I don't disagree with your comments. Information from other districts is knowable, at least for budgeted amounts. It would be better to get specifics of what cases the firms are billing and how much for each case. Unfortunately, providing itemized bills to tax payers is no longer required. Web Link

Actually they are staggering expenditures, but I left off the $52,900.87 in monthly legal settlement fees (I could only find one month, the other is missing so I will estimate the grand total is $100K for the summer) and could not find Stubbs and Leone expenses, but odds are there is another $50,000 to $100,000 in there from them. That makes $500,000 for two months in the summer.

And I don't need newspaper articles like this regarding Lodi's staggering expenses amounting to $2 million to see that PUSD's school districts spending millions on lawyers is completely out of line and not 'normal' ---

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But the newspaper articles confirm completely that Pleasanton Unified's expenses in the legal area are outrageous.

The Pleasanton Weekly should obtain all of Lodi's invoices as well as Pleasanton Unified's. Seems like they same many of the same lawyers.

Not surprised.

Isn't the Vranesh decision due tomorrow the 19th? Guess it will be at the end of the day. That decision will begin to sort things out especially with legal fees!!

Hi all,

that's an absurdly high amount to spend. Whoever has those invoices, would you mind sharing those in a link? I would like to see the invoices personally but I couldn't find a single trace online.

Thank you

Wilson,

This story is from 2015. But you can see payments to law firms as well as all other payments in the school board packet in the agenda.

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