With tears and taunts, PVUSD board rejects censure of trustee Gabe Medina — and exposes bitter divide

Frustration and emotion saturated a Pajaro Valley Unified School District board debate Wednesday evening as trustees voted down a proposal to censure one of their colleagues. The heated, nearly two-hour discussion highlighted deep division within the seven-member board and left several community members and trustees expressing concern over what they saw as a governing body consumed by internal feuding.

“At the end of the day, we are wasting valuable time and energy that should be focused on serving our community,” trustee Jessica Carrasco told the board during fiery exchanges over whether to censure trustee Gabe Medina over allegations of antisemitic comments, policy violations and confrontational behavior toward other board members.

The resolution to censure Medina, which failed in a 4-2 vote, followed a rebuke by Santa Cruz County Superintendent of Schools Faris Sabbah. He told the board in an April 23 letter that he was concerned about comments made during an April 16 discussion over the district’s ethnic studies curriculum that Sabbah said appeared to “invoke anti-Semitic tropes” and potential violations of the laws and policies regulating the board’s meetings. 

The debate over the plan to censure Medina sparked deep division within the board, with some trustees expressing disappointment that so much time was being spent on trustees’ failure to cooperate with one another and saying the censure motion had only served to divide the board further. 

“We’re not acting like a successful team at the moment, but we are a team,” said trustee Carol Turley, who voted against the resolution, saying she felt it would do more to cause division than bring the board together.

Several people, including teachers and trustee Carrasco, also said they felt the censure was being applied unfairly. They felt other former trustees had also exhibited poor behavior during meetings and hadn’t faced any consequences or a censure as strong as was proposed against Medina, who would have been restricted from serving in a leadership role on the board until he completed governance and board leadership training.

Carrasco questioned why similar action wasn’t taken when another former trustee, Oscar Soto, verbally attacked a student trustee last fall: “This tension distracts us from the work that we are elected to do.” During a meeting last fall, student trustee Daniel Esqueda condemned Soto for describing “ignorance in this community,” according to a report in The Pajaronian. In response, Soto told Esqueda to “get your facts straight” before making statements and chastised him for supporting Medina’s candidacy. 

Jewish community members expressed concern over Medina’s comments at an April 16 meeting. Speaking directly to them in the crowd, at the April 16 meeting, he said he doesn’t “see you people at protests against immigration. I don’t see you at protests when people are being taken away right now.”

“This was not just uncomfortable, it was antisemitic,” one PVUSD teacher said. “What troubled me just as much was the silence from other trustees in response.”

Trustee Joy Flynn, who had also faced accusations of making antisemitic remarks, acknowledged the community’s concerns. “Comments made during the most recent board meeting, though not intended to cause harm, did result in pain for members of our community,” she said, adding that she hoped the moment could serve as “an opportunity to foster meaningful and respectful dialogue.”

Much of the debate at Wednesday’s meeting centered on the fractured relationship between Medina and trustee Misty Navarro, who accused each other of lying and misrepresenting their attempts at reconciliation.

Fighting back tears, Navarro accused Medina of prejudging her character since her appointment to the board last year and creating a hostile environment. She identified herself as the unnamed trustee in the resolution whom Medina had taunted with “Come at me, Barbie!” during a closed meeting of the board. 

“It would be a disservice to the students of our community to not stand up to this bullying behavior,” said Navarro, an emergency medicine doctor with Salinas Valley Health. “It’s misogynistic. I got called Barbie. That’s Dr. Barbie to you, thank you very much.”

Medina countered that his comment came after Navarro “flipped me off” and compared him to President Donald Trump – details he said were deliberately omitted from the censure resolution. 

Navarro added that she had made repeated attempts to reach out to Medina to meet and reconcile their differences, but that Medina hadn’t accepted the invitations.

Medina acknowledged that Navarro had reached out to him, but criticized her approach, saying she had sent him an email to set up a meeting that asked him to “put the pettiness aside and figure out a way to communicate effectively,” and accused him of not serving his constituents.

“How am I supposed to respond to something like that when it is so demeaning and you constantly pick on me?” he asked. 

The exchange devolved into both trustees accusing each other of lying, and both cited attention deficit disorders, with Medina defending his communication style and Navarro countering that her own diagnosis didn’t lead to confrontational behavior. “She’s egging me on right now,” Medina said, “like she does all the time.” 

Turley asked that fellow trustees stop posting on social media about each other or district staff – as Medina and Navarro had done about each other – and said she hopes they can work through their challenges through mediation rather than with censure. 

“How can we expect the people in our community to work together if we can’t work together?” she asked. “There’s only seven of us, and if we can’t figure out how to work together, how are we expecting a larger group to do that? We need to lead in that process.”

FOR THE RECORD: This story has been updated to correct Joy Flynn’s name.

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