Santa Ana : Adult Education Ruling Appealed

A group of school districts has appealed a Superior Court decision denying them control of adult education classes offered by the Rancho Santiago College District.

Rancho Santiago officials said they learned that the districts, which had sued to take over the adult education program, will not abandon the 3-year-old dispute.

“We’ve just come through four years of statewide recession, we’re in the middle of the Orange County bankruptcy, and they continue to force us to spend classroom money in court,” a displeased Charles W. Maddox, president of the college’s trustees, said of the school district officials.

At issue is $3 million in state funds to provide adult education, Maddox said. A Superior Court judge dismissed the lawsuit last year, saying the dispute was a matter for state officials, not courts, to decide.

The districts--Orange Unified, Anaheim Union High School, Placentia Unified, West Covina and Charter Oak--filed an appeal June 30.

Tom Schrodi, director of instructional services for the Orange Unified School District, said the college district is not fulfilling its mission to educate the 6,000 adults who use the program.

The school district ran its own adult education program until 1972, at which time district officials drafted an agreement with Rancho Santiago. That agreement lapsed in 1980 and has not been renewed, Schrodi said.

“In order for them to offer our classes, we need an agreement,” Schrodi said. “And we don’t have an agreement.”

Maddox said the college has been trying to work out an agreement with Orange Unified for years to no avail. “We have offered to work with them, and they have refused,” he said.

Maddox said Rancho Santiago has spent at least $70,000 on attorney fees in the case.

Attorneys for the school districts were unavailable for comment Wednesday.