SANTA ANA : School Trustee Will Seek Second Term

Trustee Audrey Yamagata-Noji has announced that she will seek a second term on the Santa Ana Unified School District board.

Yamagata-Noji, 38, made her announcement several months after fellow trustees Sal Mendoza and Gerardo Mouet made public their intent to run for reelection to the five-member board in November.

“It’s a lot of hard work,” Yamagata-Noji said Wednesday. “Sometimes the board has been placed into positions where there’s really no good way out.”

Yamagata-Noji said the most difficult problems facing the county’s largest school district are financial. Severe cuts in state funding forced the district to trim more than $13 million from its 1991-92 budget. She has made several unofficial trips to Sacramento to plead the district’s case.

“It’s a nightmare for us because our numbers keep growing,” she said. “We’ve had some outstanding programs that have had to be dismantled.”

But she said the district has been able to begin a number of innovative programs during the last four years to help deal with its ethnically diverse student population.

“We have worked very hard to create positive changes in the Santa Ana district,” she said. “I want to be around to ensure that the many efforts that have been initiated under my tenure will be continued.”

Yamagata-Noji is assistant dean of student services at Rancho Santiago College and was elected to the board in 1987. She has a doctorate in education from Claremont Graduate School and is a licensed marriage, family and child counselor.