NEWPORT BEACH : School Trustees Get Extra Year on Board

Trustees of the Newport-Mesa Unified School District will each have an extra year tacked onto their current terms because of a unanimously approved plan to consolidate school board elections with state general elections.

Board members hope that the change will generate higher voter turnout. It is expected to save the district about $40,000 in election costs.

“I think we owe it . . . to do anything we can to increase voter turnout for such an important office as the school board,” Trustee Edward H. Decker said.

Added Trustee Sherry Loofbourrow: “We owe it to the children and the taxpayers to make sure the school board elections generate the highest number of educated school board voters.”

Each of the seven board members serves for four years, with four seats up for election in every other odd-numbered year and three other seats up in the alternating odd years. Now, all elections will be held in even-numbered years along with state elections.

Seats that would have been contested in the 1993 election will now be on the 1994 ballot. Likewise, trustees who were elected to office last fall and whose seats would have been contested in 1995, will see those elections postponed until 1996.

The seats that will now be contested in 1994 are held by Trustees Loofbourrow, Roderick H. MacMillian, Judith A. Franco and board President Forrest K. Werner. Last fall, Trustees Decker, Jim de Boom and Martha Fluor were elected to office, and elections for those seats will be in 1996.