Fight over a tiny, rural school leads to a lawsuit against SLO County district
A battle over how many grades are offered at a small, distant San Luis Obispo County school has escalated from the boardroom to the courtroom.
A San Luis Obispo County resident has sued the Atascadero Unified School District for allegedly repeatedly violating public meeting law over 17 years, as officials discussed and voted on issues pertaining to the education of students living in the California Valley.
In the lawsuit, filed Aug. 26 and amended on Oct. 13, Santa Margarita resident Gregory Nelson alleges a series of missteps by the school district regarding the transition of Carrisa Plains Elementary School from a K-8 to a K-5 site.
The alleged violations date back to 2008 — but the most recent include Nelson’s claims that the school district failed to correct an alleged “misstatement” during a public meeting after Nelson submitted a cure-and-correct demand, a legal process used to demand an agency rectify an alleged Brown Act violation.
The lawsuit also accuses the district of violating the California Public Records Act.
Nelson’s 88-page amended filing demands declaratory and injunctive relief — including the restoration of the Carrisa Plains school to a K-8 campus, allowing middle schoolers in the California Valley area to attend school locally rather than commute to Atascadero.
Concerns about long bus rides — approaching four hours a day for some students — have been brought up by affected community members over the past year. In April, families reported they were waking their kids up at 5 a.m. to eat breakfast and get to school on time. Meanwhile, students wouldn’t return home from school until around 5 p.m.
Parents complained that the bus rides took a toll on their kids’ mental health and encroached upon their free time.
The district was poised to begin discussing a solution to the commute problem at a Sept. 16 school board meeting, but the item was pulled from the agenda due to Nelson’s lawsuit, according to meeting minutes.
“As a result of uncertainties surrounding this litigation,” district Superintendent Tom Bennett said during the meeting, “it is prudent to pause next steps on a new program so that the court process may play out.”
The district’s legal counsel, Lozano Smith, filed a demurrer in the case — essentially, challenging the sufficiency of Nelson’s arguments and the legitimacy of the lawsuit. In a filing, the district’s counsel also expressed frustration with alleged “procedural transgressions” in the case.
The Tribune reached out to the Atascadero school district for further comment but had not received a response as of Wednesday.
The Tribune also reached out to Nelson, who responded that he would not be able to discuss the lawsuit until after certain pending court matters were resolved.
Nelson is representing himself in the case.
Lawsuit accuses district of violating Brown Act
Nelson’s lawsuit alleges a series of violations by the school district over a 17-year period — all relating to the Carrisa Plains school site.
The lawsuit argues that the district violated the Brown Act and breached its fiduciary duty when the school board originally voted to transition the middle school grades to Atascadero in 2008, and again when it removed 6th grade from the site years later.
The filing argues that forcing students to commute to Atascadero violates their equal education opportunity and child welfare rights.
Nelson accused the district of more recent Brown Act violations, including what the lawsuit said was the district’s failure to cure and correct an alleged “misstatement” from assistant superintendent of business services Kendyl Darnell during a July 8 meeting.
According to Nelson, Darnell allegedly misrepresented school funding calculations for necessary small schools in a way that he argues may have swayed how school board members decided to move forward with Carrisa Plains complaints.
Nelson sent a cure-and-correct letter to the district, but the district did not heed the demand, according to the lawsuit.
Additionally, Nelson accused the district of violating the district’s 1965 unification agreement by removing sixth through eighth grades from the Carrisa Plains site.
The lawsuit requests that the 2008 decision, as well as subsequent decisions that resulted in sixth grade also being transferred to Atascadero schools, be voided by the court. Nelson also wants the actions that followed Darnell’s alleged misstatement on July 8 nullified.
As for the alleged misrepresentation of school funding regulations, Nelson demanded the court order an independent review of the school district’s handling of average daily attendance funding for necessary small schools, according to the lawsuit.
School district says lawsuit lacks evidence
The school district’s legal counsel filed a demurrer in Nelson’s case on Oct. 28, asking the court to dismiss several claims due to a lack of evidence.
The district’s primary argument against the alleged Brown Act violations was that the statute of limitations for any legal action to be taken has expired — decades ago, for some of the claims.
The law requires complaints to be filed with an agency within 30 days of an alleged violation, and to file legal action within 15 days of an agency failing to respond to that, according to a filing supporting the district’s demurrer.
“Here, Petitioner has clearly missed the deadlines to demand Respondents correct these alleged violations and to file a lawsuit,” the document said.
The district argued that several of Nelson’s other claims were also moot under similar statutes of limitations.
Generally, the filing said that most of Nelson’s arguments lacked evidence to show any legal wrongdoing. According to the district, most arguments lacked a valid legal basis for a lawsuit.
“In addition to the above grounds for demurrer, the FAP [first amended petition] on the whole is riddled with uncertain and unintelligible conclusionary allegations, which prejudice Respondents’ ability to respond and defend the lawsuit,” the document said.
The only complaint the district did not specifically include in its demurrer request was Nelson’s complaint about public records act violations.
Hearings in the case have been scheduled out through April, with the next on Dec. 16, according to re:SearchCA. Judge Michael Kelley was assigned to the case.
This story was originally published November 6, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
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