The Pace Is Quickening for Laguna Board Chief

Jan Vickers’ way of focusing on a difficult problem is to run. Or swim. Or ride a stationary bike.

The president of the Laguna Beach Unified School District board, a former marathon runner and triathlete, had cut down to “only” 50 running miles and five hours on the bike a week.

That was until the schools’ startling financial meltdown struck last month, just weeks before classes are to begin. And Vickers has cranked it back up again.

The exercise allows her more time to think through problems and talk them over with her husband of 28 years, Don, who usually runs with her.

“Oh yes, I’ve increased a bit, but it really helps,” said a chuckling but panting Vickers, 49, who squeezes in daily phone calls while pedaling her stationary bike. “It’s a cornerstone of communication time for us.”

In her 10 years on the board, there has been no shortage of problems for Vickers, who was even recalled from office once. And now she he finds herself in the eye of another storm.

An outside consultant who was asked to study the school district budget for the coming school year discovered $1 million in purported bookkeeping errors and unexpected expenses. The deficit was a staggering blow to the 2,500-student district.

The news triggered not only a string of layoffs, resignations, pay and program cuts that is still unfolding, but an uproar among outraged parents. All five board members are also feeling the heat, but none more than Vickers, who is their leader and is opposed in her November reelection bid.

Their detractors say the board was warned of the problems months ago.

“I can’t pin it on any one person, but I don’t think they did their jobs,” said Tom Klingenmeier, the high school’s former athletic director and campus supervisor who received a layoff notice last week. “The school board is supposed to question the district expenditures, the programs and the salaries.”

Others say trustees of small districts are not paid and should not be held as accountable as, for instance, Orange County supervisors who didn’t foresee the bankruptcy. Many of those residents are squarely in Vickers’ corner.

“She has the energy, analytical ability and experience we need to get us through this,” said former board member Carl Schwarz, a Fullerton College political science professor and longtime Vickers ally. “We are really lucky to have her there now.”

Schwarz was beside Vickers during what had been her most difficult period as an elected board member. It was in 1987, when the head football coach was allowed to continue his duties after being arrested twice on cocaine-related charges.

The board members who voted to allow him to stay--Vickers, Schwarz and Charlene Ragatz--were recalled after a campaign that polarized this tightknit community.

“The recall was cruel, very hard on my family,” Vickers said. “You would go to the store and people were outside collecting signatures and saying unpleasant things about us. Plus, Ian [her now 26-year-old son] was in high school then, which made it difficult.”

After the recall, Vickers plunged back into her focusing routine: She ran.

“It was a hard blow and the temptation was to stay home, but I couldn’t do that. I went out and ran through the streets of town. That’s how I deal with it,” said Vickers, a 32-year Laguna Beach resident and UC Irvine graduate.

Both Schwarz and Vickers rebounded from the recall and were elected to the board again, Schwarz in 1990 and Vickers in 1992.

“I wanted to finish the job that I started,” Schwarz said. “I knew Jan would too. She is that irrepressible type.”

Vickers acknowledged it will take all the energy she can muster to push through the current financial disaster, which has already taken a toll. Supt. Paul M. Possemato has taken an early retirement, Chief Financial Officer Terry Bustillos was fired and Nancy Hubbell, the district’s special services director, resigned.

In all, the school board has been struggling to cut $2 million from its $13-million annual operating budget in the past six months. Before the latest crisis, district officials had spent months dealing with the loss of property tax revenues from the 1993 firestorm and $700,000 lost in the county bankruptcy.

It has been a process that has meant layoffs of more than 70 classified employees--mostly clerical workers and teachers’ aides--and drastic cuts in the district’s award-winning teaching programs.

The next step may be pay cuts for teachers. Dave Slevcov, a high school political science teacher and head of the district’s teachers union, has warned his group is “not going to just roll over on this.”

What this could mean for Vickers’ reelection bid is difficult to determine, most local observers say.

Michael Pinto, a longtime officer of SchoolPower, a local foundation that raises money for the district, said board members cannot be expected to be accountants.

“The greatest tragedy of all would be to have anybody point an accusatory finger at any of the board members for this mess we are in,” Pinto said. “Here are folks devoting huge amounts of their time for zero compensation.

“Nobody said you have to be a [certified public accountant] or a [chief financial officer] to be on the board, only that you be a community member doing your best. That’s the basis for our democracy.”

Vickers said she hopes voters allow her to continue on the board after November to see the district “through this extremely difficult situation.”

“People are angry and I don’t blame them. I was angry too, but you have to put that aside,” she said. “It’s a disaster but we are working are way out of it. Things aren’t going to be the same, but we have to focus on what we have, not what we have lost, and go on.”