3 Trustees Notified of Recall Campaign

A group of citizens seeking to recall three members of the school board said they have mailed formal notices to board President Michael J. Verrengia and Trustees Sondra Rinker and Helena Rutkowski notifying them of the pending effort.

“This is the first formal action that we have to take,” said Jeanne Salinas, spokeswoman for a 40-member group called Citizens to Recall Rutkowski, Rinker and Verrengia. “The notice was sent to them today by certified mail.”

Salinas said the group is targeting the three because of a May 6 decision to buy out the contract of former Supt. Gail Wickstrom at a cost of $163,000.

“It was a misuse of public funds,” Salinas said.

Verrengia and the two other trustees cited political and philosophical differences with Wickstrom in defense of the buyout. The school board has since named Barbara DeHart as interim superintendent of the 9,000-student elementary and intermediate district.

“It was not a misuse of funds,” Verrengia said of the buyout. “It was within our authority to buy out the contract, and nobody overstepped their bounds.”

Verrengia said the group’s members are “entitled to their own opinions, but I don’t believe that citizens will be fooled by the misrepresentation of this issue.”

Verrengia said he believes the group members are “hard-core Gail Wickstrom supporters” who “have not raised one finger to help out the new interim superintendent to keep things stabilized.”

“In fact, it appears they’re going out of their way to keep things destabilized,” he said. “I can’t believe they would do this.”

Salinas said the pro-recall group, after a brief waiting period, can begin circulating petitions in the community.

The group needs signatures of 20% of the area’s registered voters, or about 6,000, for a special election.