An embattled San Diego Unified School District board member, accused of holding a fundraiser to pay for her son’s school tuition, entered a guilty plea to one count of receiving gifts in excess of the legal limit Feb. 2, the San Diego County District Attorney’s office said. A judge ordered Marne Foster to resign her position on the school board. A plea agreement resulted in a sentence of three years’ probation and Foster’s resignation, which was tendered Feb. 2 and is effective Feb. 7. Foster will not be allowed to run for any office for four years. Foster was also sentenced to 120 hours of community service and will have to pay a fine and restitution, according to the District Attorney’s Office. The District Attorney’s Office initially opened a criminal investigation of the matter last year. Shortly after, the office served a search warrant to the San Diego Unified School District seeking information about the former board president. Fact Check: School Board President Denies Filing Claim
Foster was charged with one count of receiving gifts in excess of the legal limit, $460 a year, and not reporting it. She also failed to report a gift of approximately $2,000.
She filed forms in 2015 without listing gifts from that source. She amended the forms, but that does not absolve her from potential criminal implications. Defense attorney Adam Gordon said Foster wants to take accountability and put this incident behind her. Foster was already the center of a civil investigation, ordered by her fellow school board members, to determine if she orchestrated a $250,000 complaint filed against the district by her son’s father. In a statement, the district’s general counsel, Andra Donovan, explained she instructed the lawyers involved in that investigation to suspend their work and instead focus on aiding the district attorney’s requests. Foster had previously apologized for holding a July benefit to raise money for her son’s tuition. In attendance were people who presented possible conflicts of interest, such as contractors who work with the district and employees who may seek favors in return. Foster pledged to return the money. In a third issue, administrators at the School of Creative and Performing Arts, where Foster’s son attended class, have accused Foster of using her influence to remove the principal and punish a head counselor.
SD Explained: The Marne Foster Flu
In December of 2013, Foster called District Superintendent Cindy Marten, allegedly angry about a negative college evaluation written about her son. Marten said she instructed Foster to take the issue up with the district’s head of counseling or the school’s principal. The creative arts school soon contracted an independent investigator to look into Foster’s allegations. As a result, Kim Abagat, writer of the evaluation, was suspended nine days without pay, and another counselor wrote a more positive evaluation for Foster’s son. At the end of that school year, Mitzi Lizarraga, the school’s principal at the time, was reassigned to a new position in the district. Lizarraga said she is “positive” that she was reassigned because of Foster. Marten said Foster had every right to raise her concerns as a parent, and she maintains that pressure from Foster had no effect on her decision to move Lizarraga. Last year, the father of Foster’s son, John Marsh, filed a $250,000 claim against the district, saying the negative evaluation caused his son to be rejected by multiple colleges. The claim says the family had a right to the money to recuperate costs of counseling for the student and the loss of tuition aid. However, Marsh told Voice of San Diego last September that he did not write the claim – Foster did. He claims Foster presented him with a blank complaint form and told him to sign it. Foster has said she had no part in the claim. The district board voted Michael McQuary as the new board president to replace Foster in 2015. The move was called part of a routine, annual switch, not linked to the investigations. – NBC 7
