Memo Blasts 3 Orange School Board Members : Education: Teachers’ union leader brands newly elected officers as being from the ‘far right’ in a letter to 2,300 employees. His remarks are dismissed as hyperbole.

One of the more militant leaders of the union representing teachers in the Orange Unified School District has distributed a scathing memo warning that three newly elected school board members will create a new conservative majority on the seven-member board that will attempt to crush the employees’ unions.

In a two-page letter circulated among most of the district’s 2,300 employees over the past week, El Modena High School special education teacher Mark Rona blasts the three conservative school board members elected earlier this month for supporting the school-voucher initiative, which the education establishment said would have destroyed the state’s public schools.

“It is doubtful whether any of these individuals have any conception of the true meaning of public education,” Rona said of the board members, warning that they will be the puppets of state Sen. John R. Lewis (R-Orange) and Assemblyman Mickey Conroy (R-Orange), whom he described as being “to the right of Atilla the Hun.”

With more than two weeks left before they even take office, the targeted board members dismissed Rona’s harsh missive as political hyperbole, and said the former union president was “jumping the gun.”

“I haven’t even gotten into office yet. I haven’t gotten a chance to do anything yet,” complained Max Reissmueller, 25, one of three new board members who were endorsed by either Lewis, Conroy and other conservative politicians.

“If people are going to judge me (on the basis of) attacks that have very little foundation by people who have never met me . . . then we’ve got a real problem,” said Reissmueller.

Martin Jacobson, 40, an accountant who shared campaign literature with Reissmueller, worried that Rona’s memo could hamper the board’s effectiveness.

“I don’t want to be looked at as an enemy before I even get to meet anybody,” Jacobson said. “My biggest concern is that he’s trying to get us all off on the wrong foot. If we meet with people, they’re going to perceive us as being against them right off.”

Rick Ledesma, 31, the third new board member aligned with the conservatives, could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

Jacobson, Ledesma and Reissmueller all defeated union-endorsed candidates Nov. 2. A fourth new trustee, James Fearns, was supported by both of the district’s employee unions.

Rona, who has taught in the district for two decades and now sits on the union’s 12-member executive board, says in the memo that the new trustees want to “systematically cut (the unions) to ribbons” by slashing employee benefits and contracting out for services.

“Brace yourself for a visit by the ‘Far Right’,” Rona wrote in the memo, which was printed and distributed by the teachers’ union. “I believe that it was people like them . . . who burned witches in Salem. These kinds of people thrive on trying to legislate their brand of morality.”

Lewis, one of four politicians named in the memo, brushed aside Rona’s warnings as “ridiculous.”

“I thought it was the musings of a sore loser,” he said in an interview Tuesday. “It was a cross between a little amusing and a little sad. . . . The verbiage and everything was so inane that I just don’t think it’ll be taken seriously.”

The presidents of the district’s two employee unions said Tuesday that they share some of Rona’s fears, but want to try working with the new board before attacking it.

While many employees have applauded the memo, others are worried that it is too strident and too early to be effective, said David Reger, president of the teachers’ union.

“What he said needs to be said (but) I don’t think it’s something that I, as president, would like to say at this time,” explained Reger, a Canyon High math teacher who defeated Rona and two other candidates for union president this past spring.

“I would like to develop a working relationship with the current board,” said Reger, adding, “I realize it’s a conservative majority; I realize there are some potential problems, but I don’t want to make any problems.”

Added Becky Mayers, who heads the classified employees union: “I want to wait and see.”

The sprawling, 26,000-student school district is no stranger to turmoil.

Under Rona’s leadership, the teachers went on strike for a week in 1988. In a scandal that spanned roughly five years, a maintenance supervisor and two contractors were indicted and ultimately convicted for embezzling $100,000.

And for more than a year, the district has been without a permanent superintendent.

Reger and other teachers said the colorful rhetoric reflected Rona’s personality, and Rona himself explained it by saying, “There’s a time for militancy, and I think this is it.

“They’re not interested in public education, they have a different agenda,” Rona said of the newly elected board members. “Politics is involving itself in local school board elections, and it ought to stay the hell out of it. . . Our (union) has to get stronger again like we were in the past in order for us to survive.”

Two years ago, Maureen Aschoff and Robert Viviano were elected to the board with the public backing of conservative politicians. This fall, the politicians took an even more active role in the school-board campaign, and the candidates they endorsed were successful in three out of four races.