The Burbank Unified School District Board of Education voted Thursday to let the superintendent and top business official approve purchases and contracts up to $25,000 without prior board sign-off, a shift board members framed as standard practice but one that reopened wounds from a fraud case that has shaken the district.
Board trustees approved revised policies governing expenditures, purchases and contracts after a debate in which two members said they were still grappling with “trust issues” tied to the embezzlement conviction of a ex-trustee.
“I want to do this because I know it’s the general policy of most school districts our size and from any other organization that I’ve ever been with, there is some delegated authority,” Board President Abby Pontzer Kamkar said.
“I’m also just having a hard time with it, just to be perfectly candid, and it’s not about y’all,” she told BUSD staff. “It’s trust issues.”
Board Vice President Emily Weisberg said she was not yet ready to support the delegation, describing “residual PTSD” from being deceived by a previous board member.
District Superintendent Thomas McCoy acknowledged the trauma but noted the fraud would not have been covered by the new policy because it exceeded the threshold and would still have required board approval.
“We have a new fiscal team in place from top to bottom,” McCoy said, adding that BUSD staff has “addressed the controls internally between purchase orders, accounts payable and purchasing with checks and balances.”
He offered to postpone a vote on the contract-approval policies, but the board ultimately moved the revisions forward.
Both policies passed with a 3-1 vote and one member absent.
The policies require that any expenditure or contract over $25,000 come before the board. The board also prohibited “split bidding,” which is dividing a larger contract into smaller pieces to stay under the threshold.
Board Clerk and Area 1 Trustee Laurette Cano noted that spending still appears on the district’s purchase order report filed every 60 days.
The meeting opened with Kamkar reading aloud the victim impact statement she delivered at the sentencing hearing for former trustee Charlene Tabbott, who was convicted of embezzlement and conflict of interest.
Kamkar said Tabet “used her position for personal gain” over nearly 12 years and asked the court to reject the proposed plea agreement, impose the maximum sentence and order Tabbot pay restitution.
A sentencing hearing is set for Monday in downtown Los Angeles.
“The facts of this case are astonishing,” Kamkar told the court Oct. 21 in a victim-impact statement. “Tabet used her position for personal gain with no regard for the impacts to the District, and was only discovered because she asked that her fraudulent contract be renewed. Our community has never received an explanation, an apology or any remorse shown for this reprehensible behavior.”
Tabet pleaded no contest in July to one felony count of having a financial interest in a contract or purchase made in an official capacity.
After a report from BUSD officials, Burbank police initiated the embezzlement case in June 2025. District officials raised concerns about a contract awarded in September 2024 to Specialized Support Services LLC for up to$90,000 to address a two-year backlog of school board meeting minutes.
The school district hired the company to organize a backlog of school board meeting minutes, but the contract was established under the name of Tabet’s daughter, BreeAnn Weist.
Investigators found evidence that Tabet signed W-9 forms and endorsed district checks using Weist’s name, then deposited the payments into her personal bank account. The BUSD paid Tabet $93,000 between December 2024 and May 2025.
The contract was approved during the tenure of former Superintendent John Paramo, who resigned in June 2025.
Tabet’s resignation from the Board of Education in followed three months later.
The AI platform Civilio assisted this report.