Deficit the Top Issue in School Board Race

When members of the West Covina Unified School District board revealed last spring that the district had somehow fallen $2.6 million in debt, angry parents, teachers and students blamed board members for being inattentive to the district’s financial problems.

At a board meeting in May, teacher Betty Joyce sternly told the five board members: “You have lost the confidence of the community that elected you.”

In the Nov. 3 election, three members of the board will try to keep the seats to which they were elected four years ago. Eight parents and a former West Covina student are challenging the incumbents, with fiscal responsibility the dominant issue of the campaign.

The incumbents--board President Kathy Jones and board members Elba Comeau and Dottie Grinstead--all say they were unaware of the deficit until April because the district’s administrators did not keep them apprised of costs and revenues.

They argue that the role of board members is to oversee the district’s management, not to scrutinize its day-to-day operations.

The deficit, expected to total $3.3 million when the fiscal year ends on June 30, 1988, was the result of cost overruns in areas such as computer maintenance, building repairs, consulting fees and payroll and inaccurately high projections of revenue from sources such as state lottery funds, according to a management review prepared in August by the consulting firm of Wilson Riles and Associates.

The review suggested improvements in the district’s accounting procedures and recommended ways the district could cut expenditures and increase revenue.

Until the district repays the $3.3 million it has borrowed from the state to cover its shortfalls for the past two fiscal years, state-appointed trustee Stanley Oswalt will oversee the district’s operation.

Seven of the nine challengers have pledged that their first priority would be to help return the district to sound financial footing, so that it can repay the state without hampering the quality of education.

Some candidates have been strident in their criticism of the current board, while others simply say they have more experience in fiscal management than the incumbents.

Several of the challengers have backgrounds in accounting, law or public administration, which they say make them better qualified to remedy the district’s financial problems. They argue that had they been on the board last year, they could have detected the burgeoning deficit more quickly and could have taken steps to control spending.

The incumbents have said the district has made great strides toward balancing its budget since the board hired Supt. Jane Gawronski in July. They point to the fact that the board was able to make substantial cuts in the 1987-88 budget without reducing the number of teaching positions.

With contract negotiations between the district and its certified employees--teachers and administrators--and classified personnel set to begin in February, incumbents argue that continuity on the board is important. They say that board candidates must be familiar with a wide range of educational issues, not just the budget deficit.

No One-Issue Candidates

“Anyone who is only running on a one-issue platform will find that won’t carry them through the tough times,” Jones said.

Jones, 41, was elected board president in 1984 after serving one term as a board member. She works for a public relations firm and has three children, two of whom graduated from Edgewood High School in West Covina and one who is a student there.

Jones said she has consistently voted to control salaries and capital expenditures in her eight years on the board. During this time, she said, student test scores have improved substantially. She said board members have demonstrated over the past five months their ability to deal with the district’s fiscal problems.

“I’d been the only voice of reason on the board for a very long time,” Jones said. “Now, I think the school board is a strong board, and I think the situation we’ve just gone through has helped strengthen the board. . . . We are working together as a team through this financial crisis.”

Comeau, a 64-year-old housewife whose two children both graduated from West Covina High School, is completing her first term on the board. Before being elected to the board, Comeau said she was active in school affairs and regularly attended school board meetings for 16 years.

She is the board’s representative in a statewide assembly of school boards.

Understands Frustration

Comeau said she understands the frustration of parents and teachers with the board’s failure to recognize the magnitude of the district’s financial problems before April. But she said voters must understand the difficulty of the task facing board members.

“To sit in the audience, it’s very easy to say, ‘Why didn’t they do this, that or the other,’ ” Comeau said. “I can give no excuses to my constituents. I’m there, I’m a board member, I should know. But I’m not an accountant and even if I were, it wouldn’t have made any difference because the figures others fed us were incorrect.”

Grinstead, 57, is a housewife and 30-year resident of the city whose six children all graduated from West Covina High School. Grinstead said that she and other board members are doing all they can to remedy the district’s financial problems while still trying to maintain the quality of education.

Responding to challengers’ accusations that the board should have been aware of the deficit earlier, Grinstead said, “Anybody can say that afterwards-- we say that afterwards--but we are not in an administrative position on the board. . . . We were misinformed and not informed, and when we became aware of it, we acted quickly.

“I know a lot of the challengers are saying, ‘We’d go in and look at the books.’ Well, you can look at the books until you’re blue in the face. The school district’s budget is very complex. . . . If you’re paying professionals a goodly amount of money to handle these things, you have to, at some point, assume they know what they’re doing.”

The nine challengers seeking seats on the school board are:

Roy D. Amicangioli, 55, a locksmith with the Walnut Valley Unified School District who has lived in West Covina for 11 years. Three of Amicangioli’s six children graduated from West Covina High School and two now attend the school.

Amicangioli is on vacation this week and could not be reached for comment. In his ballot statement, Amicangioli cited his experience as an employee with the school district in Walnut and the fact that for the past four years he has served as the Walnut chapter president of the California School Employees Assn.

“Both these experiences have allowed me to gather knowledge of the inner workings of a school district and understanding of the formulation of school budgets,” Amicangioli said in the statement. “. . . I can help (the district) get back on its feet and achieve the credibility it owes its students and faculty.”

William J. Brutocao, 37, an attorney in Covina, whose oldest son attends elementary school in the district. Brutocao said the board has not been aggressive enough in seeking new sources of revenue to help the district avoid making severe budget cuts in educational programs.

Among these sources of revenue are vacant school sites which the district leases, Brutocao said, adding, “They haven’t done a good job of just collecting the rent on one of those sites.”

Brutocao said that as an attorney, he can take a different approach to problems from board members who do not have a legal background.

“One of the things that’s damaging to any organization is to have a relatively homogeneous membership,” Brutocao said. “There’s too much of a shared viewpoint. . . . I don’t think it would be beneficial to have a bunch of attorneys on the board, but I do think it would be beneficial to have one.”

James (Mike) Carrigan, 39, a retired county probation officer, whose two daughters attend Willowood and Orangewood schools. Carrigan said his goals would include renegotiating the lease agreements on the district’s vacant schools and creating a supervision program for latchkey children whose parents are at work when they come home from school.

Carrigan said among his first priorities would be to investigate whether public funds were misappropriated by district employees and to revise the district’s accounting procedures to ensure against such abuses. He cited the study by Wilson Riles and Associates, which found that there were no purchase orders for many of the district’s expenditures.

“There’s no trail of expenditures, there were no safeguards (against misuse of funds),” Carrigan said. “. . . When I was with the county probation department, my last assignment was as an internal affairs investigator, investigating my own department. That’s experience you can only gain by going down there like a vacuum cleaner and looking into everything.”

L. B. Fonseca, 57, a public administrator who has worked as an accountant and county juvenile probation officer. Seven of Fonseca’s 12 children graduated from Edgewood High School and the other five attend school in the district.

Fonseca said his experience in budgetary matters could help the district pay off its state loan without significantly increasing the student-teacher ratio. He said he questions the district’s reorganization plan, which is intended to close three schools, as called for in the review by Wilson Riles and Associates. “What happens if we need more schools in the future?” Fonseca asked.

“I don’t think (current board members) know enough about planning and reorganization,” Fonseca said. “Their expertise doesn’t lie in that area. . . . Why are we going to try to reelect the same officials who have gotten us into so many problems, just so they can try to, quote-unquote, get us out of the mess?”

Elias Martinez, 39, an accountant with two children, including one who attends Wescove School. Martinez said his budgetary expertise is unique among board candidates and that he has gained insight into the district’s financial problems by serving on the district’s fiscal advisory committee, formed last spring to suggest remedies to the deficit.

“Part of my duties (as an accountant) are precisely to help prepare and revise budgets,” Martinez said.

To avoid a recurrence of the situation in April, when the board was surprised by the size of the deficit, Martinez said the board should conduct a budget review earlier in the school year. He added that the district board should attempt to increase revenue by ordering the sale of vacant school sites and by closing some schools through district reorganization.

“A thorough review of the sale of school sites is in order, provided that we can get agreement by the city and the state to allow us to use that money to repay the loan,” Martinez said. “We’d go a long way toward getting out from under the (state-appointed) trustee’s review.”

B. J. (Joe) Mount, 60, a division manager with Southern California Edison Co., who has four sons who graduated from West Covina High School. His youngest son attends the school; his oldest is employed there as a teacher and coach.

Mount said the budget deficit was the reason he decided to run. He said he sees no “overriding educational issues” confronting the district, other than to maintain educational programs while coping with the budget crisis.

“Our No. 1 objective has been and continues to be to offer a quality, well-rounded education for our children,” Mount said. “I just think the current board (members) were remiss in their responsibility to make sure the administration did what the administration was hired to do.”

Peter (Pete) Sabatino Jr., 33, a school records administrator with the Los Angeles County Office of Education. Sabatino is attending a conference out of town this week and was unavailable for comment.

In his ballot statement, Sabatino primarily addressed the issue of the deficit and criticized the board, saying it was unresponsive to the concerns of parents and district employees. Sabatino promised that if elected he would return half of his salary as a board member to demonstrate his commitment to fiscal responsibility.

“I am committed to creating honest working relationships with staff and union members,” Sabatino said in his ballot statement. “. . . The community voice has too often fallen on deaf ears. It’s time to bring about a change: a change in education, a change in our school board. Our children’s education is serious business.”

H. John Sheety, 49, a counselor who has a doctorate in counseling and pupil personnel services. Sheety has two children who graduated from West Covina High School and one who is a student there.

Sheety said that most candidates are so preoccupied with the budget deficit that they have overlooked the issues of academic performance, the need to make the elementary school curriculum more rigorous, drug use among students and the safety of the district’s schools.

“The financial problem is so apparent that everyone forgets about education,” Sheety said. “Being in education, I can identify these problems. Since the other candidates are in business, they can only identify one problem, the financial problem.

Michael H. Spence, 21, a political science major at UCLA and a 1984 graduate of Edgewood High School, where he was student body president. While a student, Spence led an unsuccessful drive to place students on the school board.

Spence also believes that educational concerns, such as teacher morale, the quality of the curriculum and academic standards, have been lost in the furor over the deficit. He said that budget cuts should be concentrated at the higher echelons of the district’s administration instead of those areas that directly affect students.

“With all of the financial problems, education should still come first,” Spence said.

He added that as a recent graduate, he could provide the board with a first-hand view of the district’s problems. “I went through the whole system. I saw what worked and what didn’t work. I think I’d add a different perspective.”