A District in ‘Disarray’ : Irate Parents Skeptical of School Board’s Letter Acknowledging Mistakes

An El Monte elementary school board, which removed a popular Latino school superintendent and last week ordered police to evict irate parents from a board meeting offered a mea culpa Tuesday night.

“We, as the Board of Education, a collective body, recognize that the governance and management of this district has been and is in a degree of disarray,” read a statement, printed in English and Spanish, that was handed to the 250 people who crammed the evening meeting of the Mountain View Elementary School District.

In it, the five-member board outlined its part in creating problems and pledged to work with parents, school personnel and acting superintendent Albert Gasparian.

But parents, most of them Spanish-speaking, remained unimpressed after the meeting at Payne Elementary School.

“It’s a game,” said Rosa Zamora, a leader in a newly created parents’ group, Parents Involved in Community Action (PICA).

“We don’t believe it,” Zamora said. “(The statement) is like something they give to babies to make them stop crying.”

Zamora and others pledged, in turn, to begin a recall drive to unseat board members if they fail to reinstate Julian Lopez, superintendent for the past three years, whose removal brought to a head a long-simmering dispute in the troubled, 90%-Latino district.

Lopez was perceived by the Latino community as an ally. He started a popular awards program and an after-school and weekend program aimed at encouraging Spanish-speaking pupils to improve their grades. But he also was politically active, backing school board candidates, often in direct opposition to those backed by unions representing employees and teachers in the district, which has 11 schools and 9,100 students.

Last November, his activism cost him the board majority that had supported him. Two Lopez-backed incumbents, James Galvan and Armando Esparza, lost reelection bids. When a third member, Maria Avila, went on to the El Monte City Council, Lopez found himself continually at odds with the board.

The problems prompted the board to hire educational consultant Leland Newcomer, who issued a report in July describing the root of the problem as “a war over power.” He called the fight unbalanced, comparing the board to a country with atomic weapons and Lopez to a country with bows and arrows.

“Unfortunately, while this absurd war goes on, people are getting hurt, students’ education is in jeopardy--anxiety and paranoia run rampant,” Newcomer wrote.

Parents blamed the board for the logistics troubles brought in September by the reconfiguration of school boundary lines. Some parents complained that children from one family were attending three different elementary schools, and others said children who live blocks away from a school were being bused across town. Further, parents accused the board of cultural insensitivity, claiming they were treated rudely at meetings, intimidated, harassed and ignored.

The board finally decided at a Sept. 29 special meeting to resolve the district’s problems by placing Lopez on paid administrative leave. That action further incensed parents, who showed up 300 strong at last week’s meeting, waving placards and chanting.

Unnerved, board chairman Robert Griffith ordered police to clear the hall, but the four officers who responded decided against taking such action when confronted by PICA attorney Bonifacio Garcia.

Tuesday, with Griffith out of town on business, the board was more subdued, patiently listening to parents’ complaints for nearly three hours and offering to resolve logistical problems with the help of a parent ad hoc committee.

But they were mute on their plans for Lopez, saying Gasparian would be in control for an “indefinite” time.

“We want to see how things smooth over or how everyone reacts to this move,” board member Joe Moreno said.

Meanwhile, the parents pledged to continue their activism. Although many are not U.S. citizens, Zamora said more than 150 parents have signed up for citizenship classes.

Teresa Casas, another PICA leader, said she has single-handedly registered 500 Latinos to vote.

“A lot of these ladies were like church mice a year ago,” attorney Garcia said. “The board has done what the Southwest Voter Registration Project couldn’t do, get these people interested in getting citizenship and voting.”