International Experience with Laguna Roots
When it comes to Laguna Beach Schools, Howard Hills is no stranger. He and his family have multi-generational attendance records spanning decades, weaving a unique connection with the local school system that, for the third time, has prompted Hills to run for an open school board seat in November.
“Our local schools have been good to my family since the 1930s,” recalls Hills, who graduated from LBHS in 1970. “After Pearl Harbor in 1941, teachers at LBHS made my uncle Bob and his classmates wait until May of 1942 to finish high school before going to Santa Ana and enlisting. My kids and our grandkids later attended the same schools my uncle and I did decades earlier.”
Hills’ “back-to-school” journey is unique. After earning his bachelor’s at Cal State Sonoma, he completed law school at Cal Western in San Diego. The Peace Corps then beckoned in 1978, where Hills helped pen constitutions for new nations in Micronesia. At age 29, he became a Navy officer and JAG lawyer. Later, he was assigned to the White House as lead counsel for Micronesian treaty negotiations with the same island nations he worked with during his time with the Peace Corps.
“While I have never had a political appointment, I have had more than my fair share of dreams come true in the Peace Corps, as a U.S. Navy JAG, as general counsel for a high-performing federal agency, and as a constitutional lawyer in major court cases at the federal appeals and Supreme Court levels,” Hills said. “Not to mention actually working for and, on a few occasions, directly with Presidents Carter, Reagan and Bush at that early stage in my career.”
As a constitutional lawyer, Hills has worked for the Department of Justice in the federal appellate courts and as attorney of record for the State Department. He was also the researcher and author of three books and numerous law journal articles on constitutional law, one with a foreword by a former Attorney General and, in 2007, another with a foreword by a former President.
Peace Corps to School Board
Hills ran for LBUSD School Board in 2016 and garnered a few thousand votes, but was unsuccessful. He had planned to repeat the campaign in 2020 but was called back to Washington.
“To my surprise, in 2020, I was retired but essentially was ordered back into federal service as a senior advisor for State Department negotiations to extend for another 40 years the Micronesian treaties I negotiated in the 1980s. When the Biden administration came in, I was promoted as a senior advisor to the President’s Envoy for Pacific Compact Negotiations. The treaties we negotiated were signed in late 2023, so I came home to Laguna.”
After re-retiring from federal service, Hills said he didn’t anticipate running for LBUSD School Board again. However, the same concerns as in years past resurfaced.
“I was deeply concerned with how much more rigid and defensive the board had become, rather than open, transparent and tolerant about being questioned or criticized,” Hills said. “I decided to give voters a choice they otherwise would not have, for a board member with a proven record managing positive change for the better.”
Working with board members and staff, Hills said, if elected, he plans to draw from his experience as a former student, parent and grandparent in Laguna schools, as well as his career in governance law at federal, state and local levels, to propose measures such as taking back fiscal accountability, community consultation while planning school site development and capacity building, “so board members act for the community with confidence and independence, end imbalanced dependence on consultants and costly litigation as a political tactic.”
Hills also said he plans to reverse the over-delegation of board responsibilities to staff and prioritize a fully established skateboarding program.
Hills considers his 40 years of experience negotiating bipartisan compromises and finding solutions in complex circumstances sets him apart from the other candidates.
“Having educators on the board always adds value, but we need diversity,” said Hills. “We should not have only educators supervising educators. The elected board members govern, and the educators educate. The educators support the board in governing, but educators do not govern in an ultimate or final sense. Board members support educators but do not try to be educators.”
LBUSD School Board President Jan Vickers is also running for re-election in November, while board member Kelly Osborne will not seek another term. Margaret Warder, Sheri Morgan and Lauren Boeck are also running for one of the two open school board seats.
For more information about Hills’ campaign, visit ElectHowardHills.com.
