Parents’ Ad Urges Attendance at School Meeting : Education: Groups plan to file petitions calling for a new superintendent in the Newport-Mesa school district.

Amid rising concern over classroom overcrowding, supply shortages and a lack of teachers aides, a group of parents in the local school district has taken out an advertisement in the local newspaper aimed at increasing turnout at tonight’s school board meeting.

The ad, addressed to both taxpayers and parents in the cities of Costa Mesa and Newport Beach, urges parents to attend the 7:30 p.m. meeting of the Newport-Mesa Unified School District Board of Trustees at Harper Elementary School. The school is located at the corner of 18th Street and Tustin Avenue.

The $370 cost of the ad, which ran in Saturday’s edition of the Daily Pilot, was paid by about a dozen parents involved in a petition drive to replace longtime Newport-Mesa Supt. John W. Nicoll, said Greg Wohl, a key organizer of the signature campaign.

Wohl’s group and several others throughout the two-city school district plan to file petitions calling for a new superintendent tonight, he said.

“We don’t feel that he has dealt with the problems in the school district other than by crisis management,” said Wohl, owner of an investment firm and father of two children attending Newport-Mesa schools. “We don’t think he has used any vision to deal with the problems facing the district.”

Nicoll, who is recuperating from successful heart bypass surgery, could not be reached for comment. But several of the seven school board members have publicly indicated their continued support for Nicoll.

Wohl said parents’ concern about continuing deficits, forced layoffs and serious cuts in school programs was only heightened by news that the district’s chief financial officer, Stephen A. Wagner, was under criminal investigation for possibly diverting school funds for his personal use.

Wagner, 40, was fired two weeks ago by trustees for writing four checks totaling $175,356 to Cobbler Express Corp., a Victorville-based shoe repair company that he co-owns.

No criminal charges have been filed against Wagner, but a probe into the check-writing by the Orange County district attorney’s office is continuing in tandem with a detailed audit of school district funds for the past several years.

Wagner’s attorney, Paul S. Meyer, has said repeatedly that no funds have been proven to be missing from the district’s revolving health fund account, which is used to reimburse employees and pay carriers for health care costs. All four checks, written by Wagner between June, 1990, and April, 1992, were drawn on the health fund.

The financial questions raised by the Wagner case alone should persuade trustees not to renew Nicoll’s yearly contract at their meeting in early December, Wohl said. “If he were a CEO of a private company, he’d be gone.”

But trustees and Nicoll have characterized the check-writing situation as the actions of one 21-year employee who had gained everyone’s trust.