BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
The Palo Alto Unified School District is in the middle of at least 11 different lawsuits, including cases that allege unchecked bullying, racist attacks, injured students, inadequate special education and retaliation by district leadership.
The growing number of lawsuits against the district came to the fore when the school board voted Feb. 10 to pay former P.E. teacher Peter Colombo $3.25 million to drop his case.
Colombo accused the district of mishandling an unsubstantiated rape allegation against him from 2002.
Colombo claimed that former Superintendent Don Austin withheld documents showing that he worked at a different school at the time of the accusation, tarnishing his reputation.
The latest cases were filed in February by two former employees: Assistant to the Superintendent Victoria Maya and Custodial Supervisor Wei Kung.
Maya said that acting Superintendent Trent Bahadursingh called her “the ‘P’ word” for taking medical leave in February 2023 after a coworker yelled and screamed at her.
“After learning of Bahadursingh’s anger towards her, she no longer felt safe to return to work,” Maya’s lawsuit said.
Bribery alleged
Kung said she was fired in June for complaining about Maintenance and Operations Director Mark Herrera possibly taking bribes from vendors.
Both Maya and Kung said they were treated differently than male employees.
The district won’t talk about the cases.
“We respect that anyone has the right to pursue legal action. As is standard practice, the district is not able to comment further on pending litigation or personnel matters,” spokeswoman Lynette White said in an email on Tuesday.
Former Palo Alto High School robotics teacher Kathleen Krier is headed for a trial on March 30 on her claims that she faced homophobia and bullying from parents while she was a robotics teacher in 2018, and the district did nothing to help.
Krier claims boosters harassed her because she was trying to make the team more diverse at the district’s urging. One of the boosters allegedly referred to Krier as “him” and “he,” which was offensive to Krier as a woman and a lesbian.
Krier said that on Aug. 15, 2018, she went to her office and found that her gay pride rainbow flag had been broken and put in the trash. She alleges that the boosters encouraged student to complain about her.
Special education the focus of one suit
Substitute teacher James Hong sued the district on Feb. 19, 2025, for allegedly firing him after he testified at a hearing about the district’s failures to address the needs of special education students.
Hong taught special education at Gunn High School, JLS Middle School and Greene Middle School from August 2023 to December 2024. But Hong was neither trained nor certificated as a special education teacher, his suit said.
Parents William Nee and Wei-Wei Lin are suing the district for allegedly taking too long to respond to a public records request for thousands of pages related to how the district handles special education.
Nee and Lin filed their request on Nov. 30, 2022, but the documents still haven’t been provided, their attorney said in a brief last month.
Diana Fox, a Black teacher’s aide at Gunn High School, sued the district on June 2 for allegedly firing her after she reported that she received racist text messages from a coworker.
Fox said she received four racist texts calling her the n-word, referencing her skin color and telling her not to go back to Gunn.
“They hate you here at Gunn, hoping you’ll quit. Just do yourself a favor and don’t return,” one text allegedly said. Fox said she forwarded the messages to Assistant Principal Kat Catalano the next day. Catalano replied “thanks” and said she would check in after winter break. But she never followed up and moved Fox into a different classroom on Jan. 7, 2025, according to the lawsuit.
Fox said she reported the texts to her staffing agency and was fired by the district the next day.
Three of the cases against the district are from parents who said their kids were injured or inappropriately touched on campus.
Students claim abuse
Parents of a 9-year-old African-American boy are suing the district and its after-school program, Right At School, over three weeks of alleged abuse at Escondido Elementary School in January 2024.
Former Right At School employee Daniel Bueno, 27, of San Carlos, told students to attack the boy, who was chased down, kicked in the groin and stomped on his side, Stanford Deputy Pete Posada said in a police report.
The boy told Posada that Bueno also locked him in a closet and swung a jump rope at him.
Bueno signed a plea deal to do 60 days in the sheriff’s weekend work program on Feb. 5, 2025, court records show.
The district counter-sued Right At School and its employees on Nov. 17. A hearing is scheduled on Wednesday.
Parents Todd and Kerry Feinberg sued the district after their son fell on playground steps at Ohlone Elementary School on April 21, 2023. The boy allegedly cut his face on a sharp edge of fiberglass, resulting in stitches and a scar.
A judge will schedule a trial on Wednesday that’s expected to last three to five days, court records show.
The family of a girl in kindergarten at Ohlone Elementary School claims the district allowed her to be poked between her legs by three boys in February 2024, among other inappropriate touching.
Principal Elsa Chen “repeatedly minimized the incidents, referring to them as a mutual ‘game’ among the students,” the family’s suit said.
The family notified Austin, but he didn’t intervene, the suit said. Both sides are exchanging evidence before a possible trial on Feb. 22, 2027.
Paly principal accused
A mother is suing the district after her son, a freshman at Palo Alto High School, was allegedly questioned for more than two hours without food or water about another student sending around pornographic materials.
Principal Brent Kline allegedly brought up the student’s art projects and Wikipedia browsing history, even though they had nothing to do with the incident, and the student was suspended for the last month of the 2021-22 school year, the suit said.
Trial is set for Feb. 16, 2027.
Another former Paly student, Joshua Vasquez, is suing the district for allegedly allowing him to be bullied starting in September 2021. Vasquez said the other student spread rumors about him and urged his football teammates to attack him. His case is scheduled for a trial on Sept. 14.
All of the cases were filed in Santa Clara County Superior Court or federal court. The law firm Davis Bengston & Young is defending the district, court records show.
I feel it will take some time for PAUSD to recover from all this but in time with honesty and doing things the right way it will get better. To recover from 8 years of corruption will take time and as a tax paying parent, I’m grateful for Colombo exposing all these people. As a district no way you are paying 3.25 million to a teacher to just go away, the screwups and not doing things correctly must have been major! Maybe this guy did get completely railroaded and if true this story would make a great Dateline or Netflix special. I’m thinking anyone involved in that lawsuit should never draw another check from PAUSD. Absolutely Austin, Trent, and Hickey because they were entrusted with following procedure in such cases.
All the old gang that bullied and intimidated to get things done are now being or have been shown the door. The last thing will be to make sure that the DAUBERS have nothing ever again to do with PAUSD. Michelle and Kenny will do whatever they need to stay in control in the background and I’m hoping the community realizes how dangerous these people are. Those two will do anything to get their agenda in place.
How did the Daubers become so influential?
Well thank heavens our “leaders” awarded Austin and his top guy the big bucks upon leaving while already running their side hustle consulting firms leaving the rest debating if closing Churchill will prevent suicide.
So much easier than having dealt with the underlying issues dating back years / decades.
I think the Dauber’s influence may come from a couple of sources:
1. Ken Dauber was the President of the PAUSD Board of Education. He is also a Google Engineering Manager. It is no secret that high tech companies like Google see school board seats as an in to school districts nationwide. Many school districts, PAUSD included, now rely on Google products for classroom and administrative use plus data storage. There are even “Google Certified Teachers” trained by Google on many campuses, PAUSD included. In other words, Google is pervasive in public education, and having a board president under their roof means more influence.
2. Michelle Dauber is a well known activist law professor at Stanford. She was behind the recall of Santa Clara County Judge Aaron Persky. She also publicly went after Johnny Depp and his attorney in regards to the Amber Heard case back in 2022. It is alleged that she was also pulling the strings in the effort to get Pete Colombo convicted of a crime he did not commit.
I’m sure there are other ways these two have gained and wielded influence. It’s just good to see that they don’t always get things their way.
Wow. That is just the lawsuits. Think of the staff and community members that do not have the resources or life changing time to seek complete justice.
Thanks for the article, this is an important issue to cover.
Great reporting, thanks for the article.
About 8 years ago,the Palo Alto Superintendent of schools was Skelly. The Dauber slogan, “we csn do better”, was behind PAUSD getting rid of Skelly. He went on to become Superintendent of schools in Mountain View. Have we reslly done better?
Is anyone else concerned that PAUSD is currently facing 11 separate lawsuits? It feels like a massive lapse in judgment that senior Board members Shana Segal and Shounak Dharap rushed through Don Austin’s $421,272 contract extension in June 2025 while these legal issues were mounting.
Now, the Board has appointed the head of HR as interim Superintendent – despite the fact that many of these lawsuits involve former employees and HR disputes. It’s a clear conflict of interest. Shounak has been at the center of Austin’s hiring, his multiple extensions, and the confusing ‘Superintendent Emeritus’ arrangement when Don Austin left. Given this track record, Shounak should not be leading the search for a permanent replacement. We need to hit the brakes and let a new Board in 2027 conduct a clean, unbiased search for a leader who can provide a fresh start. Shounak and Shana are the least qualified to determine who the next Superintendent should be.