Lack of transparency in the relationship between DJUSD and Village Farms developer

By Elizabeth Coolbrith

I am a parent with two children in DJUSD schools, and I’m sharing this focused update because Davis voters deserve to see some specific information that hasn’t been laid out clearly in one place. This goes to the heart of transparency and illuminates an aspect of the relationship between DJUSD leadership and the Village Farms developer. Now that these documents are public, I feel a responsibility to share them.

Two pieces stand out:

First, there is long‑term developer funding of DJUSD entities tied to Village Farms developer John Whitcombe and Tandem Properties, who have been major funders of DJUSD through the Tandem Foundation. Public records show roughly $40,000 a year in donations to Davis schools for over 20 years, totaling close to $500,000 as of 2023. These generous donations are legal. But they can create the appearance of a very close, ongoing financial relationship between this developer and the district.

Second, newly released public records include an email from the Village Farms development team asking DJUSD to keep Measure V communications off email.

The email, posted above, is from Rochelle Swanson, a marketer for Tandem / Village Farms, to DJUSD Superintendent Matt Best and district spokesperson Maria Clayton. After attaching a draft Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) about the project, she writes (emphasis added):

“As we discussed, we will refrain from emailing details outside of our face to face or virtual meetings. We all appreciate the collaborative relationship on these important matters.”

In other words, while the superintendent was giving presentations that closely tracked the developer’s talking points and encouraging a “Yes on V” vote, the developer’s own marketer was explicitly asking to keep the details of those conversations off the written record.

The existence of an MOU casts the district’s relationship with this developer in a very different light and raises questions about how independent the district’s public advocacy on Measure V really is. I’m not putting a formal criminal label like “bribery” on this, because that requires proof of an explicit quid pro quo. But when you combine:

• Hundreds of thousands of dollars in developer‑linked donations to DJUSD over decades, and  
• A written request from the developer’s marketer to keep Measure V communications with the superintendent off email

— it raises serious questions about transparency, conflicts of interest, and how independent the district’s advocacy on Measure V really is. Davis voters deserve to see this and draw their own conclusions.

Since I first shared this information publicly, a School Board member has suggested that I should have reached out privately to ask, “What is this all about?” Fair enough. If I had been given the chance to ask questions directly, here is what I would have asked:

1. Why was a formal, legal MOU agreement needed?  
2. What was the purpose of the MOU?  
3. Should the school district be coordinating with the development team at all?  
4. What were the terms of the MOU?  
5. Under California law, should a school district be endorsing a particular development project on the ballot at all?  
6. And if there is a formal legal agreement between the district and a developer, shouldn’t the district itself be proactively disclosing it, rather than requiring a Public Records Act request?

If the district and developer can answer those questions clearly, in public, that would go a long way toward rebuilding the trust that has been damaged.