Tustin : School Board Opponents Fail in Recall Move

Organizers of a recall effort against three of the five Tustin school board members conceded that they had failed to collect enough signatures by Thursday’s deadline.

But one of the organizers, Thomas Goreth, said Thursday that unhappy parents and teachers now would explore how the Tustin Unified School District might be disbanded and merged with neighboring Irvine Unified School District.

Goreth said 8,000 voter signatures were needed to get the recall question on the November ballot. “We were able to come up with 6,455, so we missed it by about 1,500 votes,” he said. “We just ran out of time.”

But district Supt. Maurice Ross said Thursday that the collapse of the recall movement indicates that the community supports the district administration.

“I think the community wants to concentrate on all the positive things that are going on in our school district now,” Ross said. He said those “positive things” include improvements in the school system’s California Assessment Program scores for elementary students.

But Goreth said there is still strong community feeling against the incumbent school board majority and against Ross. “Nine out of 10 people we approached would sign our petitions,” he said. “People were also sending us money, even when we weren’t soliciting it.”

Last year, Tustin Unified was the only school district in Orange County to have a strike by teachers. The strike was nominally over wages, but the union accused Ross of being dictatorial and unfair to teachers.

After the six-day strike last October, the Tustin teachers succeeded in persuading voters to oust two incumbent board members. Candidates endorsed by the union won the two seats.

The union then backed the Tustin Concerned Citizens Committee’s effort to recall board members Joyce Hanson, Chris Layton and Barbara Benson.