Angry Parents Demand School Chief’s Ouster : Reaction: About 150 pack Newport-Mesa meeting room. They say the district is in ‘utter chaos.’

The telephone lines have been burning for hours with the news that the amount of money allegedly embezzled from the local school district had topped $1 million.

So when more than 150 parents streamed into the meeting room of the Newport-Mesa Unified School District trustees Tuesday night, many were gunning for bear. They had come prepared to demand the replacement of Supt. John W. Nicoll. By the end of the meeting, some were threatening recall movements against trustees who did not heed their call for new leadership.

“The parents are incensed by the gross mismanagement of our schools under the leadership of Dr. Nicoll and his cronies on this board,” said Jeff Edwards, a Balboa Island marketing development consultant. “What once was considered one of, if not the best, school system in the state is now in utter chaos.”

Edwards, who has two children attending Newport-Mesa schools, told trustees “the day of reckoning is upon you. You either start running this school district as it should be run, and return it to the level of excellence it was and can be again, or face recall. There is only one course of action we will accept and that is change.”

A small core of parents had been dogging district officials and school board members since last spring, when school officials announced plans to lay off 65 teachers and 200 non-teaching employees. By Tuesday night, their numbers had grown tenfold.

“I’d like you to see me as 400 concerned parents,” said Greg Wohl, as he waved a 15-foot-high train of petitions bearing the signatures of about 400 Newport Beach and Costa Mesa parents. The petitions called for a new superintendent.

“The message is we want you to do your job,” said Wohl, who has two children attending Newport Beach schools.

Earlier, acting Supt. Carol Berg said parents oversimplify matters when they blame Nicoll for the district’s financial woes or the alleged embezzlement of at least $1.2 million in school funds by fired chief fiscal officer Stephen A. Wagner.

And board President Forrest K. Werner said before the meeting began that the alleged embezzlement by Wagner had “nothing to do” with the ultimate layoff of about 35 teachers, with overcrowded classrooms or with a shortage of textbooks and other supplies.

And as for charges by parents that school district leadership failed to institute proper security measures, he said they had no idea they had “a weasel guarding the henhouse.”

But parents were clearly in no mood to accept such characterizations of the district’s problems.

“I would argue that the problem is not overcrowded classrooms, kids without textbooks or even financial scandal,” said Tom Vogele, a father of two children in Newport Beach schools. “These are merely symptoms of a sick organization with failed leadership.”

Phil Richardson, father of three children in the Newport-Mesa district, cited a litany of school property sales over the past decade, including $29 million raised within the past eight years alone.

“Where did that money go?” asked Richardson. “We know some of it was borrowed for the general fund and was not paid back. We don’t know where the rest has gone. Do you? We need new leadership . . . to drain this quagmire.”

After the last of the parents spoke and trustees prepared to go into closed session to hear the grim details of the alleged embezzlement by Wagner, board Vice President Roderick MacMillian told the packed auditorium of parents: “We do hear and we do listen. We do the best we can.”

Times correspondent Mimi Ko contributed to this story.