What did taxpayers get for their $863,000?

Not a damn thing.  The next school board member who decides to squander a million dollars on a non-viable defense of his ego, will have no more trouble doing it that Marty Esquivel did.  The board was asleep at the switch; they knowingly permitted or negligently allowed nearly $863K to be wasted and have made no concrete change that will keep it from happening again.

It is still their policy, and will continue to be their policy, to

• meet in secret
• with recorders turned off
• to spend from an unlimited budget for litigation
• without any real oversight*.

*Subordinate oversight is not oversight;
it is an oxymoron.

Another thing that hasn't changed is the establishment's media's willingness to ignore what they are doing, help them cover it up, and help them defame anyone with the temerity to speak out against them.

Well, not exactly "not a damn thing".

If any of this pisses off anyone enough that they might want to go to a public forum and criticize board member's incompetence and corruption individually and by name, they have have that right protected by rulings from a federal district court judge.