Why We're Recalling
Scott Harden
- He privately planned to close Thurgood Marshall and Blair High School while publicly telling parents they were "fine."
- He moved Resolution 2852 — the resolution he privately admitted was a trick to get a colleague's vote.
- He violated the Brown Act through a serial chain of private communications with Fredericks and Kenne about public school business.
Scott Harden has lost the trust of the community he was elected to serve. As District 4 trustee, he has been privately coordinating school closures — including the closure of Thurgood Marshall High School and Blair High School, PUSD's only 6th–12th grade schools — while publicly reassuring parents that those schools were "fine."
The documentary record, obtained through California Public Records Act requests, is clear. In February 2026, Harden admitted in a text message that "we tricked her into voting for the resolution so we could make changes to it after the fact." On the morning of the very vote he moved, he had already pre-negotiated the amendment language privately with Board President Fredericks. This is not transparency — it is the opposite.
In March 2026, Harden privately used AI to research California high school consolidations and found it was "hard to find success stories of any kind." That same month, at a Marshall PTSA meeting, he was publicly telling families the school was fine. These statements cannot both be true.
When Trustee Kenne predicted that public records requests would follow their text thread, Harden's response was not to stop the private coordination — it was to warn: "Careful what you type!" The records requests came four weeks later, and they documented exactly what he feared.
California's Brown Act exists precisely to prevent this: elected officials may not deliberate on public business in private, serially, outside of noticed public meetings. The Cure and Correct Letter sent to PUSD on May 15, 2026 names Harden explicitly for engaging in "unlawful, private deliberations in the form of serial communications in violation of the Brown Act."
District 4 voters deserve a trustee who conducts public business in public. Scott Harden has demonstrated, in his own words, that he will not.
Our schools, students, and neighborhoods deserve better.