ELECTIONS ’88 : ORANGE COUNTY : Bus Crisis Places Attention on Superintendent Selection Method

An unexpected issue erupted in September to focus attention on a little-known but large arm of Orange County government, the Department of Education.

About 400 disabled students found there were no buses to take them to the department’s special schools.

That situation was denounced by a series of officials, but the most telling criticism came from members of the Orange County Board of Education, the elected panel that gives the $50-million-a-year budget to the Department of Education. Some members publicly fumed that Robert D. Peterson, the elected county superintendent of schools, failed to notify them of the bus-shortage crisis.

“I am livid,” said board member Elizabeth Parker after she learned about the stranded children. “I was not privy to any information about this bus crisis, and I think the board could have been of assistance in trying to resolve it.”

Added Sheila Meyers, another board member: “If the superintendent had been appointed, he would have notified his board members in 5 minutes.”

The tension between superintendent and board during the bus shortage focused public attention on Measure A, a countywide ballot issue in Tuesday’s election. Some parents of handicapped students announced they were working for the change proposed in Measure A because of the September bus shortage.

Measure A offers voters the option of changing how the county superintendent of schools is selected. Current law provides for countywide election of the superintendent. The five county Board of Education members currently have no direct power over him.

Measure A reads: “Shall the Orange County Superintendent of Schools be elected or appointed?” The voter has the choice of marking a box that says “elected” or a box that reads “appointed.”

Peterson, 68, who has held the $94,000-a-year post for the past 22 years, is the major spokesman against the proposed change. In the official voters’ pamphlet, Peterson wrote the ballot argument against Measure A. “Giving up the right to elect is a backward step into government by an aristocratic committee like the king’s council in England that we fought in 1776,” Peterson’s ballot argument said.

The rebuttal--written by two former members of the Orange County Grand Jury, Valerie Ransom and Leonard Lahtinen, and Orange Mayor Jess F. Perez--said: “You be the judge. The only argument for continuing to elect the county superintendent is from the person who has been elected to that position for 22 years.”

Ransom is president of the Orange County Grand Jurors’ Assn., which has frequently been critical of Peterson and his operation of the County Department of Education with its 800 employees. The bus shortage, Ransom said, was an example of an instance in which Peterson could have been fired.

“If he were appointed, the board could say, ‘You’re fired, buddy, because you did not follow through on this.’ ” Peterson “never informed the board that the bus company was in dire straits,” Ransom said.

Peterson has said he has been unfairly blamed for the bus shortage. The fault, he said, was the commercial bus contractor’s. Peterson has also said that some Board of Education members have been critical of him recently “because the current board very much wants to have an appointive superintendent.”

In Orange County’s 29 school districts, superintendents are appointed, as they are in five counties in the state, including Los Angeles. The other counties have elected superintendents.

Although Peterson acknowledges that there is no known group campaigning to keep the post elective, he said he is confident voters nonetheless will. “No county has ever voted for a change,” he said, noting that the five counties with appointive superintendents got that power through county charters. A recent poll indicates Orange County voters do not favor a change to an appointive superintendent. Of 605 registered voters surveyed in The Times Orange County Poll, 64% favored an elected superintendent, compared to 17% who wanted an appointed schools chief and 19% undecided. In 1978, the last time the question was put to voters, more than 80% voted to continue electing the county superintendent.

A 1986 public opinion poll paid for by the County Department of Education found that very few of those surveyed knew about the county superintendent of schools. Nonetheless, a majority favored an elective post.

“Voters are loath to give up what they have,” said Sean Rosenberg, an associate professor of political science and psychology at the UC Irvine. “Now they have the power to elect, and they could lose that.”

But Rosenberg also said the “vast majority of voters probably aren’t even aware they have this power. Because of their lack of knowledge, they might decide it would be better to appoint the superintendent, to leave the selection in more experienced hands.”

Since the last vote on the issue a decade ago, a county grand jury, a professional survey paid for by that grand jury and a citizens Blue Ribbon Commission have all concluded that Orange County would be better off with an appointed superintendent. All of the panels studying the issue said that Orange County could seek “the best educator possible” by the appointive method.

Programetrics, a professional consultant hired by the 1985-86 grand jury, concluded that an elected superintendent is hampered because he or she must satisfy an array of constituents, some of whose “interests are remote from those of professional educators. . . . An appointed superintendent, in contrast, would command respect among the local superintendents and would not have to meet demands based on any other criteria.”

And in 1987, the citizens Blue Ribbon Commission chaired by Orange Mayor Perez also studied the issue and similarly recommended a change.

“Our commission found that given the large operating budget of the county schools office, a vastly improved system of checks and balances could be established if the office had an eminently qualified chief executive who was appointed by the elected Board of Education,” Perez said in a recent interview. “This is how it operates in other municipalities, school districts and the County Board of Supervisors. Elected officials appoint people to carry out policies.”

Perez said the existing system of electing both the superintendent and the school board means that “two parallel elected groups formulate policies that may be in conflict.”

Ransom, of the grand jurors’ group, said that several Orange County grand juries have investigated the County Department of Education during the past 20 years. “Dr. Peterson criticizes the grand juries, and then he ignores their recommendations,” she said.

Peterson, however, said his department has always made a formal response to grand jury reports. “Sometimes we implement suggestions when they are worthwhile,” he said. “Sometimes we do not, such as when a grand jury makes a ridiculous recommendation that we abolish the County Department of Education.”

Ransom, Perez and other supporters of a change contend that Measure A fared badly in The Times poll because voters do not know much, if anything, about the problems with the existing system.

More Orange County voters would support a change if they knew about the issues, Ransom said. Besides the fall bus shortage, she said, Peterson should be held accountable for the department’s long-running budget deficit and its bloated staff.

“If voters were aware of the problems, they would see the advantage of a change,” she said.

Peterson, however, denies that the education department is running a deficit, insisting instead that “we dipped into our reserve . . . last year probably about $1 million.”

He also has blamed the bus contractor, Durham Transportation Inc., for providing too few buses, but acknowledges that bus company officials repeatedly had told him that they could not operate adequately on the $2.5-million contract.

Peterson says the fact that the county’s other school districts appoint their superintendents is not a convincing argument. Too many of those superintendents, he said, are fired by their boards for unsubstantial reasons.

“That’s one of the major problems in California education--that the district superintendent is a creature of the board,” Peterson said. “I think district superintendents should be like judges who have to run for a vote of confidence. They would be appointed by their Board of Education, and 4 years later they would be in a vote-of-confidence election. If the voters kept them, they would be certain of another 4 years in their position.”

Whatever happens to Measure A, Peterson will not be immediately affected. A change to an appointive superintendent would not take place until November of 1990, when Peterson’s current 4-year term expires.

Peterson has easily trounced any candidate who has ever run against him. In 1986, his last election, he was unopposed. During his 22 years as county superintendent of schools, Peterson has from time to time come up against controversies and criticism. “I’ve learned to develop a thick skin,” he said.

Peterson said his health is good, and he still enjoys his job.

But he has not made up his mind yet whether he will run for another term as superintendent in 1990, should voters decide to continue the post as elective.

Peterson said he hopes Measure A is so overwhelmingly defeated “that it will be 20 or 50 years before this comes up again.”

Times staff writer Jean Davidson contributed to this article.