School Board Skirts Rules to Fill Post : Antelope Valley: Officials suspended their bylaws, which require them to seek applications and interview candidates.

Board members of the Antelope Valley’s high school district, brushing aside their own rules and a claim that they had violated the state’s open meeting law, filled a vacancy Wednesday with a former member who has been living hundreds of miles away.

Bob McMullen, who had served three terms on the Antelope Valley Union High School District board until moving to the San Luis Obispo County town of Cambria last year, was named to the board through November, 1991. The seat became vacant last month when board President Larry Rucker died of cancer.

Before taking a vote on McMullen’s appointment, the board suspended the bylaws for filling such vacancies, which require it to solicit applications and interview candidates. Instead, the board voted 3 to 1 to suspend the rules, then voted 4 to 0 for McMullen.

The board had also apparently decided on McMullen prior to Wednesday night’s session even though the subject had not been previously discussed publicly. The Brown Act, the state’s open-meeting law, does not allow consideration of such matters behind closed doors.

Word had been circulating within the district for several days that McMullen was to be appointed. He and his wife arrived for the board meeting Wednesday from Cambria, acknowledged that he knew he was to be appointed, but denied having ever discussed the issue with board members.

“It appears a selection has already been made. If a decision’s already been made, that’s a violation of the Brown Act,” Frank Astourian, a Lancaster resident, told board members prior to their vote. Astourian, who is president of the board of trustees of the Lancaster School District, which serves elementary school students, said he was speaking as a private citizen.

Jarold Wright, president of the high school district board, denied the claim, saying, “If there’s been any back-room agenda developed as alleged, that’s news to me.”

School board members also said that McMullen already knew the job and that the district could save about $85,000 by not holding a special election to fill the post.

McMullen registered to vote in the school district just hours earlier Wednesday, using his sister’s Lancaster house as his address. McMullen, who is retired, planned to return today to Cambria, a small coastal community north of San Luis Obispo. He said he and his wife are trying to sell their house there and return to Lancaster.

McMullen said he was assured by both the school district’s private attorney and the Los Angeles County counsel’s office that registering to vote in the district made him eligible for the appointment.

Under state law, board members of public agencies are not permitted to discuss in any other setting items that are supposed to be considered in public. School officials were not available Wednesday night to explain how the board decided on McMullen.

Unless at least 1,400 registered voters of the district sign a petition demanding a special election to fill the seat, McMullen will serve until the board’s next regular election in November, 1991. Then an election would be held to fill the final two years of Rucker’s term.