Fired Teaching Panel Appointees Puzzled Over Wilson’s Action : Education: Republicans headed for the credentials commission say they are hurt by their removal. Aides say dismissals were because they did not suppport governor’s reforms.

Eunice Sato was certain that Gov. Pete Wilson, her friend of 20 years, would undo a dreadful mistake, if he only knew about it.

So on Feb. 8, the day she was abruptly fired as his appointee to the state Teacher Credentialing Commission without explanation, Sato mailed Wilson an urgent appeal.

She said she may have been dismissed by aides without the governor’s knowledge and asked him for her job back.

No response.

Believing that the letter may not have reached him, Sato decided to hand-deliver a copy to Wilson on Feb. 25 when both would be at the Republican state convention.

But the crush of delegates and Wilson’s tight schedule prevented the two from making contact. Hastily, Sato arranged for a mutual acquaintance to deliver it. Again, no response.

In the letters, Sato, a former mayor of Long Beach whom Wilson appointed to the commission in May, also asked for reinstatement of two other Wilson appointees who were fired the same day by a telephone call.

But top-level assistants to Wilson say there was no mistake. They say he wanted the women--all Republicans--removed and believes the entire commission was out of sync with his proposed educational reforms. These include changing credentialing procedures so that talented former defense workers and military members can teach mathematics and science in California schools.

In addition, the Wilson Administration is unhappy with the commission’s executive director, Phil Fitch, a commission appointee. The governor believes that Fitch is thwarting his programs and has too much influence over the commission, according to a source close to Wilson.

“I just couldn’t believe it. I just had the feeling that Pete Wilson himself would not take me off the commission,” Sato said in an interview. “We have been friends. I have been his supporter for 20 years. . . . He wouldn’t do that.”

Sato, a longtime GOP activist, said she believed the governor would drop her a note or call her. “There’s been nothing, but I did get something from his (campaign) office asking for a contribution,” she said.

Absent public controversy, it is almost unheard of for a governor to withdraw appointees he has selected to help run his Administration, especially on the eve of their confirmation by the Senate, which had been expected to routinely confirm the three who were dumped.

The independent commission of 15 voting members, all but one a Wilson appointee, is the regulatory agency that sets standards for licensing of public schoolteachers. It also claims to be a national leader in developing a fingerprint system aimed at assuring that child molesters and other criminals do not receive teaching credentials.

Seven weeks after the firings, Sato said she is still hurt, angry and waiting for a response to her letters. So is Melissa Robinson, a Stockton schoolteacher dismissed the same day and who also asked Wilson for reinstatement.

Robinson, who was summoned from her classroom to take a phone call dismissing her, said she was given no reason but was told by Wilson assistant Julia Justice that a “mistake had been made in appointing me.”

The third commissioner, Barbara Painter, a San Joaquin Valley rancher and teacher training supervisor at CSU Stanislaus, has declined to comment.

Believing that the nominees were fired without his approval, Sato wrote to Wilson: “I believe there is a great disservice being done to you and you would want to be aware of it.”

Separately, commission Chairwoman Verna B. Dauterive, principal of Franklin Elementary School in Los Angeles, deplored the firings in a letter to the governor as “abrupt, insensitive and unfounded.”

Unless overturned, Dauterive said, the firings “will only serve to disrupt the commission’s focused agenda, and slow our momentum toward the achievement of important goals and lower the morale of commissioners and staff.”

But aides to Wilson said the actions will stand. “The commissioners were removed at the request of the governor. No one on the governor’s staff acts independently of him,” said a governor’s spokeswoman, Christine Berman.

Berman refused to divulge specific reasons for the firings, except to say that “there was a great concern that these commissioners were more interested in maintaining the status quo” than in supporting Wilson’s “forward-looking and aggressive agenda for (educational) reform.”

Sato rejected such reasoning as “lousy” and said her votes were indistinguishable from those cast by other commission members.

The Times has learned that another high-level Wilson aide, Karen Strickland, wrote a memo in September listing “Administration concerns” with Fitch, who earns $95,000 a year as executive director.

In the memo, Fitch was accused of not implementing Wilson’s program to swiftly recruit former defense workers as teachers and of failing to back Wilson in the Legislature.

“While each incident alone may not be reason for concern, taken together, they represent a pattern that translates into a loss of confidence,” Strickland said in the memo.

The memo surfaced shortly after the commission gave Fitch high marks for job performance in a confidential evaluation and several days before commissioners approved retaining him as executive director. Commission sources termed the memo a pressure tactic that interfered with the independence of members.

Education community sources, who asked not to be identified, said the document was an unmistakable signal that the governor’s office wanted Fitch removed. Fitch, who still holds his job, refused repeated requests to be interviewed.

Sources who requested anonymity said the governor believes the entire commission is unresponsive to implementing his ideas for change, especially the credentialing of laid-off aerospace workers as teachers.

“The three individuals you’re asking about haven’t done anything different from what the other board members have done. That is the problem. They are not going forward with what the governor wants pursued,” a high-level official said.

“They are just too cozy with the education Establishment right now, including (teacher) unions,” the official said. “The bureaucrat is running the board and the appointees have fallen into line and not demonstrated their independence.”

The official said the governor believed he had no choice but to fire his appointees before they were to be confirmed by the Senate because he would have no power to remove them afterward. The other 11 Wilson appointees have been confirmed and are beyond Wilson’s grasp.

Gubernatorial sources said three new appointees would be announced soon.

Sato said she, Robinson and Painter were made the “innocent victims” of a purge. “I don’t think I deserved this kind of treatment from anybody,” she said. “I shall never forget.”