ELECTIONS ’88 : ORANGE COUNTY : Grand Jury to Study Management Roles in Dept. of Education

The 1988-89 Orange County Grand Jury will examine how the $50-million-a-year County Department of Education is managed.

In a letter mailed last week to the five members of the County Board of Education, the jury’s foreman, James O. Lindberg, said: “After much consideration, the grand jury has voted to perform a study of the management functions of the Board of Education and the senior staff personnel of the Department of Education. . . . The grand jury has contracted with the firm of Arthur Young to assist. . . . “

Lindberg’s letter did not elaborate on what the study will seek. But one source familiar with such investigations said the jury is likely to investigate the relationship between the board members and the superintendent of schools.

The elected board members for years have been mostly invisible, serving mainly to vote on the annual budget and to preside over ceremonial functions. The superintendent of schools traditionally has exercised the dominant management power in the Department of Education. Robert Peterson, who has been superintendent for the past 22 years, has said state law clearly gives the management power to his elected position.

In recent months, board member Francis Hoffman has maintained that the board has more power than it ever exercises. At Hoffman’s urging, the board this year formally requested a legal opinion from the state attorney general’s office about how much management power a county board of education possesses.

“I’m all for the grand jury’s looking at the board,” Hoffman said Friday. “This is something that definitely needs study. I think the board has powers it can and should use. This whole thing is a matter of the checks and balances of government.”

Peterson, who has been critical of some grand juries in the past, said Friday that the management study by the current grand jury “will give us a free update on how we are managing things here. This will be the third time a grand jury has looked into our management. We certainly seem to get more than our fair share of their free services.”

Several grand juries in the past 20 years have investigated or studied the County Department of Education.

Measure A on the countywide Nov. 8 ballot stems from the 1986 Orange County Grand Jury. In its report, that panel urged that a citizens’ commission be appointed to study whether the superintendent should be appointed by the board rather than elected. Such a commission was named, and last year it asked that a referendum be placed on the 1988 ballot allowing voters to decide if the superintendent should be appointed.

So far that referendum, Measure A, has drawn little attention in this year’s election. A similar measure was overwhelmingly defeated in Orange County in 1978.