Conejo Trustee Wants School Board Expanded

Claiming the school board she sits on does not represent the whole community, Conejo Valley trustee Elaine McKearn is calling for expanding the panel from five to seven members.

The city’s size, sprawl and social climate demand a bigger and more diverse school board, or so McKearn will suggest at tonight’s board meeting.

“Is it written in stone that we have to have five members?” McKearn asked. “I mean, if you stuck a pin in the map of Thousand Oaks at the intersection of Janss and Moorpark [roads], and you drew a circle, right now all five of us live within one mile of that center point. It just doesn’t seem very representative.”

But foes of McKearn----who has riled board members in the past with her outspoken remarks--see the proposal as another example of her inability to work within the school district’s rules. Perhaps, they suggested, she is seeking allies, because McKearn is often on the losing end of 3-2 and 4-1 votes.

Tonight’s regular board meeting, during which McKearn will make her proposal, immediately follows a special meeting on “board communications” during which the Conejo Valley Unified School District trustees will work with a volunteer facilitator to hammer out their differences.

Trustee Dolores Didio, for one, was miffed by the proposal to expand the board.

“If you want to work within a group, you don’t keep shooting darts at the rest of the group,” she said. “It won’t endear you.”

McKearn’s maverick streak is often criticized by her colleagues, who tend to prefer decorum to debate.

After two years on the board, McKearn, a conservative Christian, has just begun to voice her own opinions, most notably by distributing her own “contract” with parents and employees when she visits schools and parent groups.

Among the “working, ongoing” contract’s provisions are allowing parents to select their child’s teacher and allowing teachers to wear religious symbols while teaching.

McKearn has also made a habit of unsuccessfully nominating herself for various school board posts--a breech of board etiquette, if not policy.

*

In her most recent proposal, McKearn said she would like to see a school board with four at-large members and members elected specifically to represent Thousand Oaks proper, Newbury Park and Westlake. The suggested reconfiguration, she said, could take place in 1998, when three school board seats, hers included, are up for grabs.

None of the current trustees live in Newbury Park or Westlake. Four are former teachers--McKearn included. And only McKearn has children enrolled in the school district.

“I think that we need some new people, some new ideas and some opportunities for discussion,” she said. “I don’t think it would be fair in the United States [Congress], if everyone was from Kansas or everyone was from the East Coast and no one was from California.”

Replied Didio: “I think five is enough.”

Though in favor of hearing different opinions, Didio said the proposal had a number of flaws. For one, if Thousand Oaks residents wanted a more diverse board, they would vote for new people. And having trustees represent specific geographic areas, rather than the whole of the almost 19,000-student district would breed parochialism, she said.

*

The proposal will only waste time that would be better spent in more substantive issues, she added. “Who wants to think about five or seven when we have to pay for all these class size reduction changes and buildings?” she asked.

Having a five-member board is not set in stone, said Supt. Jerry Gross, but it is the norm in California. It’s also part of the school district’s 1974 Articles of Incorporation--the district’s governing document.

Changing the board’s composition would require a public vote throughout the district, he said.

“I would say [the proposal] is not impossible,” Gross said. “There are provisions in the law to allow this to happen. But, you have to ask how it benefits the district children to accomplish this. I guess my question is: What’s wrong with the five [trustees] we currently have?”

Adding two board members could also turn off qualified administrators, Gross said.

“Many superintendents won’t work for districts that have seven board members,” he said. “That’s too many people to keep happy. With seven, you have seven problems to handle instead of five.”

Even with five members, the board’s veneer of decorum has been showing cracks lately, prompting the communications session. Some trustees attribute the dip in civility to McKearn’s renegade ways. Others say that efforts to stifle dissent are the real problem.

*

“What the facilitator’s looking at is something that would have been good to do any time someone new comes on the board--to bring them up to date about what we’re all about,” Didio said. “To make sure we’re all singing from the same hymnal.”

At the special meeting, board members will discuss their roles and responsibilities, as well as appropriate ways for individual board members to bring their personal ideas to the fore.

But McKearn isn’t sure what all the fuss is about.

“I’m exploring my ideas,” McKearn said. “I haven’t been critical of anyone. I haven’t hurt anyone. I’m just here trying to improve the schools.”

As a representative of the whole school board, McKearn has drawn fire for circulating her contract, which is by no means board policy.

“We all have a right to have opinions individually, but when you’re talking about negotiated items--things the board has already voted on--and things presented to the public, then I think, yes, we as a board should speak with one voice,” Didio said.

However, board President Mildred Lynch replied that so long as board members distinguish their personal views from board policy, they can air their views publicly, as McKearn has done.

“You can’t give up that right; that’s a 1st Amendment right and no one can take it away,” Lynch said. “Everyone has to respect that we don’t all have the same viewpoints about the same things, and no one is to be deprived of that” right.

Conservative parent activist Debra J. Lorier--who ran unsuccessfully for the board in November, sees the meeting as an attempt to muzzle McKearn.

“Elaine is an independent thinker,” Lorier said. “She has her convictions and speaks her mind. Why do they have a problem with that? Why is that threatening? Because they don’t like what she’s saying.”

If the meeting is an attempt to quiet her, McKearn said, she is undaunted.

“I won’t keep silent unless there’s a law that comes along,” she said.