Why PAUSD Hasn't Paid Math Case Lawyer
- Palo Alto Unified still has not paid attorney David Tollner after losing the long-running math placement case, so four parent plaintiffs filed again in court. - The unpaid amount is $38,311 in court-ordered fees, plus a new request for $4,018, after Judge Carrie Zepeda’s fee order sat unpaid. - It matters because this fight now looks less like a bookkeeping delay and more like a compliance problem inside a district already facing scrutiny.
The immediate story is simple: Palo Alto Unified lost a math-placement case, got ordered to pay the parents’ lawyer, and still hasn’t paid. So the same fight has now spawned a second one. Four parents went back to court this month, saying the district owes their attorney, David Tollner, $38,311 and has been ignoring attempts to resolve it. ### What is this case actually about? This started with PAUSD’s ninth-grade math placement rules. Four parents — Edith Cohen, Xin Li, Yiyi Zeng, and Marek Albostza — sued in July 2021, arguing the district’s system violated California’s 2015 Math Placement Act, which requires high schools to use a fair, objective, and transparent process for placing incoming freshmen in math. (padailypost.com) ### What did the parents win? Judge Carrie Zepeda ruled in February 2023 that PAUSD’s approach broke state law. The court found the district was effectively placing freshmen based on their eighth-grade level, not a fuller set of objective measures, and ordered changes — including testing students in the first month of high school, posting the policy online, and collecting placement data broken down by groups such as gender and ethnicity. (padailypost.com) ### So why is there a lawyer-fee order? Because when plaintiffs win this kind of public-interest case, courts can order the losing side to cover reasonable legal fees. Tollner’s firm asked for $104,531. PAUSD’s side pushed back, calling the hourly rate excessive. Zepeda ultimately ordered the district to pay $38,311 in attorney fees on September 5, 2024. The Daily Post says she signed the order a year later, which helps explain why the timing now looks messy but does not erase the obligation. (padailypost.com) ### Why hasn’t PAUSD paid? That is the part that still looks unresolved in public. Tollner says his emails to district lawyer Mark Davis have been ignored since December 1. The new filing asks the court to hold the district in contempt and to add another $4,018. What you do not see yet is a public explanation from PAUSD laying out a concrete reason like a pending appeal, a stayed order, or a disputed invoice. Right now, the visible record points more to nonpayment than to a documented legal barrier. (padailypost.com) ### Is this just about $38,311? Not really. For a school district, that dollar figure is small. The bigger issue is whether PAUSD follows through after a court loss. Once a district has already been ordered to change policy, unpaid fees make people wonder whether compliance is being treated as optional — and that is much more damaging than the amount itself. That concern lands harder because PAUSD has been dealing with other lawsuits and governance controversies at the same time. (padailypost.com) ### Why do parents care so much about math placement? Because ninth-grade math is a gatekeeper. If a student gets placed too low, catching back up is hard. The court’s own compliance order spelled out the stakes pretty bluntly: being held back in math can derail a student’s college path and future opportunities. In Palo Alto, where families track course sequences obsessively, that turns a placement policy into a trust issue fast. (padailypost.com) ### What happens next? The new case asks a judge to force payment and potentially sanction the district for contempt. If that happens, PAUSD could end up paying more than the original fee award simply because it waited. Basically, the district had a contained legal loss. By not closing it out, it may have turned that loss into a fresh accountability story. (resources.finalsite.net) ### Bottom line This is no longer just an old math-policy dispute. It is a test of whether PAUSD obeys court orders cleanly and on time — and right now, the district does not look like it has. (padailypost.com)
