School Board Chief Accused of Bias by 3 Colleagues : Oxnard: A letter signed by Anglo trustees alleges the Latina president is ‘overly accommodating those who do not speak English.’

Three trustees of the Oxnard School District have accused school board President Mary Barreto of dividing the board along racial lines.

Board members Jack Fowler, Jim Suter and Dorothie Sterling leveled a series of charges against Barreto in a letter that accused her of “overly accommodating those who do not speak English” and being unprepared to run school board meetings.

And at a recent dedication of a school renamed in honor of Cesar Chavez, the three charged, Barreto snubbed them by introducing Trustee Susan Alvarez, but failing to point out Fowler, Suter and Sterling to the audience.

“By directing your introduction only to the other Hispanic board member, you diminished (Chavez’s) importance and lent an air of racism and divisiveness to the event,” the letter said.

Barreto responded to the charges in a letter of her own, calling the omission at the Chavez dedication inadvertent. She also accused the three of violating state open-meeting laws in their decision to write and sign the letter. The Brown Act prohibits elected public bodies from meeting in secret and requires them to post advance notice of any meetings.

In an interview Wednesday, Barreto said she has asked the Ventura County district attorney’s office to investigate whether the drafting of the letter violated the law.

Barreto and Alvarez have sided together often on split 3-2 votes.

At Wednesday night’s board meeting, Barreto was near tears when she publicly responded to the criticism from her colleagues.

“I’m certainly not above being imperfect,” Barreto told board members at the well-attended meeting. “If I have been too flamboyant in representing myself as a Mexican, as a Chicano, then I have been misinterpreted . . . But if I have acted in an arrogant way, it is because I believe myself to be an equal.”

Barreto said: “I think the letter was an attempt to intimidate me privately. But I will not be intimidated.”

Sterling was the only board member who had signed the letter to appear at Wednesday’s meeting. She said she was disappointed that Barreto had chosen to make the matter public. “I felt we needed to work out these problems with Mary, but I did not feel it needed to be done publicly.”

Fowler, the senior member of the board, said in an interview before the meeting that he believed Barreto was “trying to find evil where it did not exist.”

“There are so many things that just need to be talked out,” he said. “I do not think we are beyond working this out.”

But Barreto said that the three Anglo board members were not able to accept the leadership of a Latina on the board, and that they feared the outcome of next November’s election would give Latinos a majority on the board.

“The Hispanic female issue is one that they have not been able to handle,” Barreto said. “Is it my actions they object to, or something else?”

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According to Alvarez, the problem stems from the Anglo board members’ belief that the Latino members are concerned only about Latino students.

“I didn’t run to represent just the Hispanic people and neither did Mary,” Alvarez said. “I don’t think they understand that.”

Alvarez said the three trustees asked her to sign the letter after the public portion of a school board meeting last month.

“I was really shocked by it,” she said. “I mean, I knew that there were problems brewing, but I thought we had worked most of them out. When I saw the letter, it really upset me because I have always felt that Mary has done an outstanding job.”

Supt. Norman Brekke and all the board members said the dispute has not affected the operation of the 12,000-student school district, which is nearly 80% Latino.

Brekke called the exchange of letters an uncomfortable situation.

“Nobody likes to get in the middle of a squabble,” he said. “But I must note that this is a personal disagreement, not one that affects in any way the operation of the school district.”

Some parents and school officials agreed, saying they knew nothing of the squabble.

“If there is a problem,” said Chavez School Principal Anthony Zubia, “it hasn’t filtered down to us.”