Education Board Heeds Grand Jury

Heeding advice of the 1985-86 grand jury, the Orange County Board of Education voted 3 to 1 Thursday to create a blue-ribbon citizens’ commission to study whether the county superintendent of schools should be appointed instead of elected.

The seven-member commission will be named Nov. 20.

The Board of Education also authorized the blue-ribbon group to spend up to $15,000 for a professional public opinion poll. The poll, to be taken before the panel’s first meeting in January, will assess how Orange County voters regard a possible change in naming the county schools chief.

The board’s move was precedent-setting. Grand juries for 17 years have called for a change in how the superintendent of schools is chosen. But no action by education boards has ever followed such grand jury recommendations.

A consultant to the 1985-86 jury recommended that the superintendent be appointed by the elected five-member Board of Education. Incumbent county schools Supt. Robert D. Peterson was first elected in 1966 and has been reelected continuously for the last 20 years. The former Santa Ana Unified elementary school principal was unopposed on the June ballot.

Jurors strongly recommended that the board members appoint such a blue-ribbon commission to study the issue.

The seven persons to be appointed will be recommended by a subcommittee appointed by the county board. The board, in its vote to create the panel, said the group will be composed of one businessman, one businesswoman, one local-district school board member, one teacher, one school administrator, and two community leaders, one of whom must be a woman.

The county Board of Education will formally appoint the seven members at its Nov. 20 meeting.

County Board of Education member Francis X. Hoffman cast the lone vote Thursday against creating the panel. “I think the scope of this thing is too narrow, and it costs too much,” he said.

But Board President Elizabeth Parker said the blue-ribbon panel will be doing a community service. She said the professional public-opinion poll would find out the real voter sentiment on the superintendent question. “You and I can generalize on this, but I can’t tell you what would happen on this (if it became a ballot question),” Parker said to Hoffman.

Hoffman responded, “I can make an educated guess that this is a waste of time.” In previous statements, Hoffman has contended that Orange County voters would never give up the right to elect the county superintendent of schools.

Supt. Peterson similarly has said he is “convinced” that the voters would never accept a change. He has noted that Orange County voters overwhelmingly rejected switching to an appointed superintendent in a 1978 referendum.

But the grand jury, in its report issued in June, said voters in 1978 got an official ballot argument against the change but nothing that gave an argument in favor of change.

Consultant’s Report

A professional consultant hired by the 1985-86 jury studied the Orange County Department of Education. The consultant’s report said the department would be better run under a superintendent directly hired and fired by the five elected members of the county Board of Education.

“The requirements of an elected office include satisfying constituencies whose interests are remote from those of professional educators,” said the consultant, Programetrics Ltd. “An appointed office, in contrast, could be limited to a professional educator whose credentials would command respect among the local superintendents and who would not have to meet demands based on any other criteria. We therefore recommend that the position of Orange County superintendent become an appointed position. . . .”

Five counties in the state have appointed county superintendents of schools. These are the counties of Los Angeles, San Diego, Sacramento, Santa Clara and San Francisco. The remaining 53 counties have elected superintendents, and no county has ever voted to change. Riverside County last November was the most recent county to consider the issue, and voters there resoundingly rejected the proposal.

Board Sets Annual Budget

Although it is an elected body, the county Board of Education has little power over the 800-employee, $50-million-a-year county Department of Education. Existing law empowers the elected superintendent to hire and fire and set policy for the huge department. The board members’ only real power is in setting the annual budget for the Education Department.

Parker and other county education board members have emphasized that a study of how the superintendent should be named is in no way meant to criticize Peterson, the elected incumbent. Peterson would complete his four-year elected term, which doesn’t expire until June, 1990, regardless of any change made for future school superintendents.

The county board, in creating the blue-ribbon panel, said it would be limited to three meetings and must file its report and recommendations by March, 1987. Five of the panel members to be named for the commission will come from each of the five supervisorial districts in the county “as far as possible,” said the board. The other two panel members will be at-large representatives.

In addition to voting $15,000 for the opinion poll, the county board voted $1,200 for expenses of the blue-ribbon group.

Board member Frances Murphy was absent Thursday, but she had voted last month for the preliminary move to name the blue-ribbon panel.