School Trustee Criticizes Board’s Secrecy

A member of the Huntington Beach City Elementary School District has criticized the board’s controversial secret vote last week to demote two administrators.

The dissident, Robert Mann, said in an interview that he thought the board’s action in initially releasing only the Social Security numbers of the two demoted officials was “ridiculous.”

In addition to Mann, the other four school board members are president Karen O’Bric, Gary Nelson, Sherry Barlow and Pat Cohen.

O’Bric said she had no comment on Mann’s criticism. As for the release of only Social Security numbers of the demoted administrators, O’Bric said, “All I can say is the board acted on the advice of an attorney who believed it was a legally correct and humane way in dealing with two people (who had been demoted) until they could be told about the action.”

No Comment on Criticism

Cohen said this week that school board policy is to defer to the board president and let the president speak for the board. Cohen said she therefore had no comment on Mann’s criticism, and Nelson similarly said he had no statement. Barlow could not be reached for comment.

Mann was first elected to the school board in November to fill the remaining two years of an unexpired term. He has disagreed many times with the other four board members. A resident of Huntington Beach, he is a junior high teacher in the Westminster Elementary School District.

Without disclosing how he voted on the two administrators, Mann, during the interview, clearly distanced himself from the board’s action last week. The board in a closed-door vote removed Hawes School Principal Rita Jorgensen and Sowers Middle School Assistant Principal Joan Skinner and reassigned them to teaching next year.

A controversy erupted after the board refused to name the administrators, gave only their Social Security numbers and refused to reveal the roll call vote on the demotions.

Mann said Monday that the board should have voted in open session or at least announced the vote. The use of Social Security numbers, he said, was not out of concern for the privacy of the employees, Mann said. “My personal opinion is that this was done to give (school board members) time to leave the room in a peaceful manner,” he said.

Angry parents had waited the night of June 14 to see how the board was going to act on Jorgensen. A group called Concerned Hawes Parents had worked weeks before the meeting to get a large turnout in support of Jorgensen.

Mann noted that Jorgensen was in the audience at the June 14 meeting with hundreds of parents prepared to protest on her behalf. It was thus no secret, Mann said, whom the board was considering for possible demotion.

“I was under the impression we were going to vote on this in open session,” he said. He added that he does not understand why the board insisted on a closed session and refused to make public its vote.

“I called the California School Boards Assn. office in Sacramento, and the person I talked to there said that she agreed with me that the action of reassignment in this case was in effect a dismissal,” Mann said. The state’s open meetings law, the Ralph M. Brown Act, requires public disclosure of a vote involving a dismissal.

But the board’s attorney, Steven J. Andelson, has said that he does not interpret the board’s action as dismissals of the employees from their administrative jobs. Andelson said they were “reassignments,” and he thus advised the school board that they did not have to disclose their action. Andelson said the board decided to release the Social Security numbers of the administrators “as a courtesy.”

A Social Security Administration official said last week that federal law forbids disclosure of the names of holders of specific Social Security numbers.

Details Remain Secret

The school board still has not disclosed why it wanted to demote Jorgensen and Skinner. Mann, while disagreeing with his colleagues’ secrecy, said he feels bound not to disclose any comments made either by himself or by other board members during that session.

Mann said he is also critical of the board’s closed-door vote that same night to give a 3.5% pay raise to district Supt. Diana Peters and to extend Peters’ contract for another year. “I believe that contract should have been voted on in open session,” Mann said.

Some parents and teachers who are critical of Peters last week assailed the school board for extending her contract and giving her a raise. Peters has been a focal point of criticism from the teachers union in the district. The teachers, who still are without a contract for the 1987-88 school year, staged a one-day strike in May and have threatened to renew the strike in September if settlement is not reached. The dispute centers on a proposed pay raise for the teachers. The school board has offered the teachers a 3.5% increase, the same amount it gave Peters and non-teaching workers in the school district.