Oak Park Trustees Seek Applicants to Replace Jeri Fox

One day after their president resigned, Oak Park school trustees met Tuesday night to launch a search for her replacement.

Beginning today, the Oak Park Unified School District is seeking applications for a new board member to complete the term of Jeri Fox. She stepped down Monday after several parents and teachers urged her to resign because she hosted a homecoming party where teenagers drank alcohol. Vice President Wayne Blasman succeeds her as board president.

On Tuesday, the remaining four trustees decided to seek appointment of a community member to fill the year remaining of her term.

Applications will be accepted until Jan. 5, and finalists will make public statements Jan. 8. The board plans to make an appointment in time for the new trustee to take office Jan. 13.

“We are looking for someone who is innovative and progressive, yet can work in a politically conservative community,” trustee Jim Kalember said before the meeting, adding that those qualifications generally describe each of the trustees on the board.

Aside from appointing a trustee, by law, the board also had the option of calling a special election, which would cost the district about $10,000, Supt. Marilyn Lippiatt said. Trustees discarded that option, concluding that it would be too costly and time-consuming.

In the past decade, the district has had to appoint two board members midterm to succeed trustees who had moved out of town in the mid-1980s.

Fox, who did not attend Tuesday’s meeting, originally said she would not resign, even though some parents and teachers were urging her to step down after chaperoning a Nov. 1 post-homecoming party where alcohol was served to about 50 teens at her home.

But “I saw the turmoil that the district was going to be in and the credibility of the board in its decision making,” she said.

The party was a last-minute idea, after Fox heard that a teenager was hosting a party where the parents would not be home. Fox said she thought at the time that it was worth hosting the party so she could monitor the festivities and take car keys from drunk drivers, thus providing an alternative to an unsupervised party.

The 30 or so parents who came to Tuesday’s meeting spoke less of Fox than of how to stop teen alcohol and drug use.

“We need a whole attitude change,” said Noreen Armerding, a Parent Faculty Club president. “We need to come up with something different. The DARE program is not working.”

Parents and trustees brainstormed on how to make their district’s substance-abuse task force more aggressive, suggesting such measures as notices about the task force in parent newsletters to increase interest in its work.

The task force is inviting a former Los Angeles County narcotics police officer to talk to parents at Oak Park High School on Jan. 22.

Oak View High School Principal Cliff Moore said he is hoping that some good will come from Fox’s resignation, which he described as tragic.

“This may be the opportunity to draw attention to what we do,” said Moore, who also sits on the district’s substance-abuse task force and runs the continuation high school.

“We have speakers and sheriffs coming to talk about this stuff, but our meetings are not well attended.”

Although people have come out both in favor and against Fox’s role as hostess to an alcoholic party, all sides agree on this: Parenting is tough, and being a board member and a guardian is even tougher.

But parents must know when to say no, Kalember said.

“You can’t always be buddies with your children and try to be cool,” he said. “The price for that is very high. In Jeri’s case, it was too high.”