Grapevine-Colleyville school trustees spar over ethics concerns

Longtime Grapevine-Colleyville schools trustee Becky St. John said she was the target of a witch hunt after facing accusations that she cursed at another board member and publicly criticized a district policy after she questioned why she did not get an explanation on why she was listed on Monday’s meeting agenda. St. John asked board president Casey Ford to explain why she was listed as a topic of discussion during executive session, and asked that the discussion take place in public rather than behind closed doors. “Obviously, I don’t know why this item was on the agenda,” St. John said. “I was trying to be respectful to you behind closed doors where we could speak as a legal body,” Ford said.

St. John asked whether the accusations against her discussed in executive session met legal requirements and wanted advice from the district’s attorney. Trustees then went behind closed doors. When they reconvened, St. John asked for the discussion to be held in public. Ford said that he didn’t like airing another person’s dirty laundry, but said that St. John cursed at another board member during a recent meeting and criticized a school district policy. Ford explained that St. John and the other trustees signed an ethics pledge. St. John denied calling board member Kathy Spradley a name, saying she did not see any evidence of that in the many videos that were emailed to her over the weekend. Ford said St. John called another trustee the “B” word followed by the “F” word, which violates the board’s ethics standards. “OK, we are now acting like our middle schoolers,” St. John said. St. John denied the accusation, but Spradley said she saw St. John mouth the words. “The email accusations are patently false. I did not call Kathy anything,” she said. Ford also said St. John called a district policy “trash” but St. John said she was referring to a policy from April and said it required more than 40 pages of legal interpretation.