Orange District Has Had Its Problems Over the Years

Charges of “willful misconduct” filed against a majority of its school board are only the latest in a series of traumas for the Orange Unified School District.

The sprawling district, which serves Orange, Villa Park, Anaheim Hills and a huge chunk of unincorporated northeastern Orange County, has suffered severe budget problems for more than a decade because of declining enrollment.

And because of those money woes, many schools had to be closed and teachers received low or no pay raises in some years. Teacher unrest over salaries led to protest parades in 1983 and a near-strike in 1984.

Personnel have come and gone amid controversy. The last superintendent, Kenneth D. Brummel, called for a police investigation of district money matters before being fired.

But while controversy is no stranger to Orange Unified, the news that four of its seven incumbent school board members have been accused of “willful misconduct in office” by the Orange County Grand Jury came as a shock to school district employees Tuesday.

“It was a surprise,” a district spokesperson said Tuesday. “The atmosphere around here (the school district office) was one of surprise.”

The grand jury’s action against the four school board members is the latest development in a scandal that has lingered over the school district since September, 1984. It was then that Brummel, who had been named superintendent two months earlier, became suspicious about some of the district’s financial records and called for an internal investigation.

After a six-month-long internal inquiry, Brummel called in the authorities. Police from the City of Orange and the district attorney’s office have been investigating the tangled affairs within the school district ever since.

“Yes, the investigation is still continuing, and we don’t know when it will end,” Assistant Dist. Atty. Martin G. Engquist said Tuesday.

Brummel, who called for the investigation three years ago, was fired by the school board last October for reasons that have yet to be explained publicly.

At an Oct. 23 board meeting, Robert Elliott, who was board president at the time, made a terse announcement that the seven-member board had met behind closed doors three days earlier and had voted 5 to 2 to end Brummel’s three-year contract prematurely. Board members said they put Brummel on paid leave of absence, effective through this Tuesday, when his contract was to have ended. The agreement required that he not speak critically of the school board. Brummel, in fact, has said nothing publicly about his firing since then.

Many schoolteachers and parents in the district told reporters that the school board had fired Brummel because he threatened to make budget cuts, including closing more schools. Two of the schools Brummel originally proposed to close were in Villa Park, a wealthy enclave of the district, and Villa Park parents had called for Brummel’s ouster.

However, some sources close to Brummel said he was fired mainly because he had rocked the boat by launching the 1984 police investigation of the school district.

Current school board president William Steiner has denied categorically that Brummel’s firing had anything to do with his call for an outside investigation of district money matters. Steiner and other board members have said that it was an audit launched by the school board in the spring of 1984, before Brummel’s arrival, that actually discovered the alleged faulty handling of money and contracts.

But Engquist, the assistant district attorney handling the Orange Unified case, said Tuesday that it definitely was Brummel’s investigation “that first led to outside authorities being called in.”

Brummel reportedly was among those who gave secret testimony before the grand jury in recent months as it looked into the bid-rigging charges.

The two board members who voted against firing Brummel were Russell Barrios and Eleanore Pleines. Pleines is one of the four school board members accused of misconduct in office by the grand jury. Barrios, who is not accused of any misconduct, also said last fall that Brummel’s firing had nothing to do with his call for a police investigation.

Still, questions remain unanswered about the firing, and board members have said they cannot discuss them because of the severance agreement.

The Orange County Grand Jury charged four Orange Unified School District board members with willful misconduct in office in connection with alleged bid rigging by a former district maintenance supervisor.

One of the largest districts in the county, the Orange Unified School District has about 24,000 students who last year attended 4 elementary, 7 junior high, and 4 high schools. The district also has one continuation high school and one facility for the trainable mentally retarded. The board is composed of seven trustees, each elected to a four-year term.

The county grand jury charged four Orange school trustees with “willful misconduct” in connection with bid-rigging allegations. Part I, Page 1.