New Orange Trustees Roll Up Their Sleeves

A victorious candidate for the Orange school board said Wednesday that she wants the new bloc to start out by trying to settle the district’s numerous lawsuits, finding money in the budget for bigger teacher raises and backing off from direct management of campuses to give principals and teachers a greater sense of empowerment.

“I don’t want to micromanage the administration and the support staff,” said Melissa Taylor Smith, one of three candidates who swept conservative incumbents from office in a recall election Tuesday. “I want to see this board get out of the lawsuits that they’re entangled with now so we stop spending tax dollars on attorneys.”

At tonight’s board meeting, for example, the outgoing board will discuss seven ongoing lawsuits plus a potential new suit--a high number for a moderate-sized district.

And Smith said Wednesday she also wants to rest: “I have not felt this tired since the last time I gave birth,” she said.

But there’s not a lot of time for resting--the new bloc has only four months in office before two of them face reelection in November. Both sides already are gearing up for that battle.

The recall campaign succeeded by the slightest of margins Tuesday night, with one of the recalled trustees, Maureen Aschoff, losing her seat by 250 votes. Still uncounted are about 750 absentee ballots, but a spokesman for the anti-recall campaign said they did not expect the results to change.

“We lost,” was the simple response of Mark Bucher, a lawyer who helped run the anti-recall effort. Despite the closeness of the election, Bucher said there are no plans to contest the results.

Also recalled were Linda Davis and Martin Jacobson.

Bucher attributed the recall’s win to his own campaign’s failure to communicate its message to voters before absentee ballots were sent out. Absentee returns favored the recall by a stronger margin than the overall results.

Meanwhile, recall supporters attributed their success to a focus on likely voters and a message that centered on teacher morale--a sore spot with many parents who were concerned about the district’s exodus of teachers. Recalls are notoriously difficult to pull off. The last successful recall campaign against a school board in Orange County occurred in 1987.

Complicating matters Wednesday was uncertainty over whether one of the winners, John Ortega, would accept the office. Ortega, who withdrew his candidate’s statement at the last minute, did not return messages left at his home Wednesday.

If he declines to take the seat, the new board would select a replacement. The term for that seat extends beyond November. Smith and Kathy Moffat must campaign to retain their new seats.

The two other trustees who made up the controversial conservative bloc on the school board, Terri Sargeant and Kathy Ward, are also up for reelection in November.

“It’s still a mess,” said Jeff Adler, a Long Beach political consultant who has watched the campaign. “There still have to be elections. The campaign will likely be fought out on the same issues.”

The campaigning will begin again almost immediately, both sides promised.

To achieve their goals of reforming the district and raising salaries, the teachers’ union-backed recall coalition not only must convince voters they made the right choice, they must garner support for two more untested challengers. They plan to start drafting candidates as soon as next week.

They can be counted on to make a point of the loss of teachers under the current board. In recent years, 700 of Orange’s 1,500 teachers have left, despite a seniority-based pay system that rewards teachers for staying in one place and generally results in sharply lower salaries when they move on.

Smith said Wednesday that one of the priorities would be to raise salaries in contract negotiations that will begin soon. The district’s salaries are below average for the region.

“I plan to do whatever it takes to find the extra money that we need to make our teachers’ salaries competitive,” she said. “That may be a multi-year plan, but at least start the process, and start the process of being serious about negotiations.”

The state teachers’ union threw its considerable political and financial weight behind the recall.

Conservative Christians and the establishment GOP, on the other hand, backed the defeated trustees, lauding the board for its early stance against bilingual education, its battle to keep a gay-straight student group off campus and its hard negotiating line with the teachers’ union.

Defeated board members said their tough stance in contract negotiations is what kept the district solvent.

And they pointed to their controversial battles as proof that they have the courage to stand up to special interests such as teachers’ unions and national civil rights groups.

“The results of this election were a contradiction,” defeated board member Davis said.

Referring to two advisory measures on the Tuesday ballot, she said, “The voters overwhelmingly agreed with our decisions to raise teachers’ salaries responsibly and to bring back back-to-basics education. At the same time, they chose to recall us and relinquish their control of schools to the labor unions.”

“I’m disappointed that it didn’t go our way,” Jacobson said. “I think we accomplished some great things in our district and I would do the same all over again.”

Supporters of the defeated board will try to show voters they made a mistake and try to get the new board members tossed right back out in November, Bucher said.

“We’ll be fighting this fight again,” Bucher said.

“People are passionate about their kids. I don’t think they want to see their schools taken over by special interests.”

Candidates must file papers for the November election by Aug. 10. Jacobson and Davis said they did not know if they would run again.

Rosalyn Lever, county registrar of voters, said she expects to certify the recall results by Friday.

Both sides said they plan to attend tonight’s board meeting chaired by the conservative majority.

“It will be like any other board meeting,” said Jacobson. “Except it will be our last.”