School Board to Explain Expulsion Reversal

Facing mounting dissatisfaction from other local school officials, the Ventura County Board of Education will hold a special meeting next week to field questions about its decision to overturn a Fillmore student’s expulsion.

The meeting, scheduled for Tuesday, comes amid growing criticism that county board President Marty Bates and two other members--Wendy Larner and Angela N. Miller--are improperly meddling in the operation of Ventura County’s 20 local school districts. Bates called the meeting specifically to discuss criticism of the board’s action in the Fillmore expulsion case. No other topics are scheduled for the meeting, which is open to the public.

“Local school boards need to have the authority to do what by law they are supposed to do,” said Dorothy Beaubien, a member of the Conejo Valley Unified School District board of education. “The county board is trying to usurp that authority.”

A resolution telling the county board it should not “usurp the local control” of schools boards to decide what is best for their students is being circulated throughout county districts, said Judy Barry, a trustee on the Simi Valley school board.

Each district’s board of education can decide whether or not it chooses to adopt the resolution, Barry said. While the document has no legal force, the goal is to let Bates, Larner and Miller know that their actions are not being taken lightly, she said.

There is a widespread sense that the county board has overstepped its authority on a number of issues in the past year, Barry and other trustees said.

School board members are angered by a vote last March to exclude Planned Parenthood and AIDS Care speakers from teacher-training seminars and by a November decision to turn down a $500,000 federal jobs-training grant intended for local school districts.

And many local trustees are denouncing a vote late last year to overturn an expulsion approved by the Fillmore Unified School District school board. Bates, Miller and Larner voted to reject the Fillmore board’s decision, with trustee Al Rosen absent and trustee John McGarry abstaining.

The Fillmore board expelled the high school student for bringing a realistic-looking toy gun to school, a violation of its “zero-tolerance” weapons policy.

But on Oct. 30, the county board ruled that the Fillmore board did not properly notify the expelled student’s parents of the policy. And that failure invalidated the expulsion, the county board decided.

State education law gives parents the right to appeal expulsions to the county school board, said Charles Weis, Ventura County’s superintendent of schools. But such authority generally is reserved for cases involving alleged procedural errors, Weis said.

Since December 1994--when Bates and Miller were seated to form a new board majority--three expulsion cases have been appealed to the county board, Weis said. The Fillmore expulsion is the only one reversed, he said.

Trustees of local districts say they believe the county board overstepped its authority and is attempting to push a deeply conservative agenda that stresses parents’ rights over education decisions.

Joanne King, president of the Fillmore board, said she believes the student’s parents were notified of the school’s weapons policy.

“They are throwing the whole thing out on a technical finding that has nothing to do with whether the child involved was guilty or not,” King said. “It tells our local parents: ‘Hey, it doesn’t matter what your kid does, you can get them off.’ ”

Miller defended the board’s decision, however, saying that while she supports zero-tolerance gun policies, the district did not follow its own procedure for notifying parents.

“We don’t believe parents and children had their rights respected,” she said.

But King said adherence to the zero-tolerance rule is needed to protect children at schools that are becoming increasingly dangerous.

“They need to be looking at the parental rights of the children who remain in school. They need to be concerned for their safety.”