County Studies Making Job Appointive : Poll to Ask What Residents Know About Schools Supt.

A cross-section of Orange County residents will be polled by telephone this weekend to find out how much they know about the county superintendent of schools.

The survey of 400 adults, to be conducted by American Opinion Research of Santa Ana, will also ask questions about the county Board of Education. The board commissioned the poll to assess voters’ feelings about a possible change in the way the county superintendent of schools is named.

Plans for the poll were completed Thursday during the board’s regular meeting.

Orange County, like 52 other counties in California, elects the county superintendent of schools. In five large, urban counties--Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Clara and Sacramento--the county schools superintendent is appointed by the elected county board of education.

No Checks and Balances

Orange County grand juries and other critics of the existing system for years have urged a switch to an appointed superintendent of schools. The critics have charged that an elected county superintendent tends to be unresponsive to a board of education and that the superintendent thus has virtually no checks and balances on him in the day-to-day running of the county education bureaucracy.

Supporters of an elected superintendent, however, have noted that the voters themselves have the power every four years to elect a new superintendent if they are unhappy with his or her performance.

In Orange County, the superintendent of schools for the past 20 years has been Robert D. Peterson. He easily has survived attempts to oust him during the past two decades and has always scored overwhelming victories in county elections. This year he won reelection to another four-year term without any opponent on the ballot.

The county Board of Education has stressed that it is not being critical of Peterson in pursuing information about other ways to name a schools superintendent. The board took up the study after the 1985-86 county grand jury recommended such action.

Study Feasibility

That grand jury also proposed that the board appoint a blue-ribbon citizens’ commission to study the feasibility of changing the way the schools superintendent is named. Following weeks of discussion, the county board on Sept. 25 voted to approve the blue-ribbon commission. Its seven members are to be publicly named at the board’s Dec. 11 meeting, said Elizabeth Parker, board president.

In the meantime, the opinion poll is being made to help guide the citizens’ group about voters’ knowledge of the county educational establishment, Parker said.

Questions in the telephone poll include one that asks:

“Some people have said that the Orange County superintendent of schools should be elected because he would be more responsive to the public. Others have said that this position should be appointed because that guarantees it would be filled by a professional in the field of education. Do you think that the Orange County superintendent of schools should be: Appointed by the county Board of Education? Elected countywide?”

Informal surveys over the years have determined that very few Orange County residents know much about the county superintendent of schools or the county Department of Education, which the superintendent runs. That department currently has about 800 employees and a budget of $50 million.

Serves as Middleman

The county department, by state law, serves as middleman between the state and locally elected school boards. Those local boards have their own district superintendent, and all of those district superintendents are appointed.

Peterson noted during Thursday’s board meeting that he could predict that the poll will show people “have an abysmal knowledge about the (county) superintendent and the county Department of Education.”