Schools Supt. Issue Heads for Fall Vote

Orange County voters this November will find an old and controversial issue on their ballots: Should the county superintendent of schools be elected, as he now is, or appointed, as several grand juries have recommended?

After months of debate, the county Board of Education on Thursday voted 3 to 2 to have the issue placed on the Nov. 8 countywide ballot.

County schools Supt. Robert Peterson told the board before its vote that he will oppose the appointment of superintendents and probably write a ballot argument against it.

“Some people already say this is ordained for defeat,” Peterson said.

But board member Elizabeth Parker said she thinks that there is a great deal of interest among voters about a possible change. “I’ve received many calls in my district about this issue,” she said.

Parker, Judith Ackley and board president Sheila Meyers voted to put the question on the November ballot. Francis X. Hoffman and Dean McCormick voted against.

Hoffman predicted that voters would never approve the change. McCormick said he did not think “the timing is right” for the issue to be on the ballot. He noted that no group is currently working to seek a change.

The proposal to have appointed county school superintendents failed overwhelmingly, with more than 80% of those voting opposed, in 1978, the last time it was on the Orange County ballot.

Only five counties--Los Angeles, San Francisco, Santa Clara, San Diego and Sacramento--have an appointed superintendent.

In the other counties, including Orange, the county Board of Education has only purse-strings control over the superintendent, who is independently elected and does not have to respond to the board.

The county situation is the reverse for local school boards and superintendents.

Superintendents for the 28 local school districts in Orange County, such as Santa Ana Unified and Garden Grove Unified, all are appointed by their elected boards. Such superintendents can be fired by the boards and must respond to policy set by them.

The county superintendent, by contrast, is accountable to the voters, not to the county Board of Education. Peterson has said that voters in Orange County will never give up that right to directly name their county schools chief.

Peterson has been county schools superintendent for the past 22 years. His current 4-year term, which expires in 1990, would not be affected by the outcome of the referendum this fall. But if the referendum passes and the county shifts to an appointed superintendent, the next schools chief would be appointed by the five elected members of the board.

The superintendent is in charge of the county Department of Education, which has a $50-million budget this year. The department provides special schools for handicapped students and for juveniles in custody. It also has a variety of administrative duties, including being the payroll arm for all local school districts in Orange County.

Some grand juries since 1969 have recommended that the superintendent be appointed, and other juries have called for the outright abolishment of the office. Some panels have suggested that accountability of the vast, 800-employee county Department of Education would be better if a superintendent responded directly to an elected board.

The 1985-86 county grand jury hired a professional educational consulting firm, Programetrics Ltd., to study the role of the superintendent. In its final report, Programetrics said an elected superintendent is handicapped because he or she must satisfy an array of constituencies, some of whose “interests are remote from those of professional educators.”

The report added: “An appointed (superintendent), in contrast, would command respect among the local superintendents and 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. . . .”

The 1985-86 grand jury urged the Board of Education to name a blue-ribbon commission of county residents to study the issue. The board, after considerable debate in 1986, named such a panel. That commission last March called for a change to an appointed superintendent.

The commission concluded that elected superintendents have “no clear-cut accountability.”

The county Board of Education has debated and studied the grand jury reports and blue-ribbon commission recommendations since last spring. The vote Thursday to place the matter on the ballot was the climax of the board’s soul-searching on the issue.

While divided in the vote, the five board members Thursday had no harsh words or divisive debate. The discussion generally was low key before the vote. Peterson offered some comments during the discussion, and his statements also were low key and without rancor.

Parker and other board members have said repeatedly that the proposed change has nothing to do with Peterson personally. “We on the board get along very well with Dr. Peterson,” she said. “This is a proposal about how superintendents in the future will be named.”

But board member McCormick noted Thursday that Peterson is a major figure in Orange County politics. McCormick added that Peterson’s opposition to a change likely would sway a majority of voters this fall, especially since no forces are active on the other side.

“Whose name is better known than Robert Peterson?” McCormick asked. “A lot of people in the county of Orange are going to (be swayed) by what is said by Dr. Robert Peterson. So I feel the timing is just not right.”

Hoffman charged that the issue is “doomed to failure” on the ballot and is “a waste of taxpayers’ money.”

The exact election cost to the county Department of Education cannot be immediately determined, according to Rosalyn Lever, assistant registrar of voters who attended the board meeting. She told the board that the cost would be about $115,000 if no other cities or special districts have issues sharing the ballot cards.

“The chances for this board having to pay this ($115,000) are very, very slim because we expect a lot of city measures,” she said. Lever pointed out that the cost of printing ballot pamphlet arguments, for and against, would be about $35,000 and must be paid by the Department of Education. Thus, the total maximum cost to the board would thus be about $150,000.

Board member Ackley said: “As a percentage of the overall ($50-million annual) budget, this is a very small amount.”

Meyers noted that although the 1985-86 grand jury urged that the board take a “leadership” role in fighting for a change in how the superintendent is named, it has agreed to be officially neutral in the November election.

She added that this does not preclude individual board members from working for or against the measure.

The board’s official move Thursday was to petition the county Board of Supervisors to put the issue on the Nov. 8 ballot. But Lever said the Board of Supervisors has a policy of automatically responding to such requests. She said the issue is thus certain to be on the Nov. 8 general election ballot this year.