Teachers’ Slate Wins in Orange

Teachers union-backed candidates for the besieged Orange school board easily swept all four contested seats Tuesday.

Trustees Kathy Moffat and Melissa Taylor Smith started out with leads of close to 30 percentage points and held on throughout the evening over their opponents, Linda Davis and Martin Jacobson, whom they had replaced after a recall election in June.

The other two candidates on the union-backed slate, Kimberlee Nichols and Rick Ledesma, defeated incumbents Terri Sargeant and Kathy Ward by large margins. Alan E. Irish and Edward Priegel, who also challenged Ward and Sargeant, each garnered less than 10% of the vote.

About 18% of registered voters in the school district cast ballots, slightly lower than the voter turnout for the recall election.

The election indicated that voters were happy enough with the new majority, which has focused its efforts on smoother relationships with teachers, to vote it back in and even enlarge it by two.

The district serves 30,000 students in Orange, Villa Park, and parts of Anaheim, Santa Ana and Garden Grove. The seven trustees on the board are elected at large, but represent separate areas of the district.

The union-backed camp, which campaigned for Moffat, Smith, Nichols and Ledesma, were gathered Tuesday at the homes of Moffat in Villa Park and Smith in Anaheim Hills.

As results were projected from a computer screen onto walls, the candidates’ supporters brandished brooms with the pictures of their opponents to indicate a sweep in the election.

“It’s a pretty good feeling,” said Moffat as supporters yelled in jubilation. “The voters are saying that they approve of the changed direction since the special election in June and they want to see a continuation of that direction.”

Candidates of the previous board majority, which was overturned in the recall election, preferred the privacy of a small gathering at Davis’ home in Villa Park with a handful of family members.

“The votes are directly proportionate to the amount of money the union spent” on the race, Davis said. “The new board has some great challenges ahead . . . The district prospered in the last four years and I am very proud of that.”

Orange Unified made national headlines in 1999 when the previous board tried to block the formation of a gay-straight student club at one of its high schools. The students sued and the club was eventually allowed on the condition that members do not discuss sex.

That controversy highlighted divisions in the 30,000-student district, where many teachers and parents criticized the board for focusing on social issues even as their schools lost hundreds of teachers in disputes over pay and benefits.

The old majority members point out that many in the district supported their stances. As for teachers’ salaries, which were below the county’s average, the old board majority said it was trying to keep the school system solvent after years of plush employee benefit packages had depleted district coffers.

The simmering dissension came to a boil last year when parents and teachers began planning a recall campaign. They succeeded in June by the slimmest of margins, replacing Jacobson, Davis and Maureen Aschoff.

But the timing of the recall meant two of the new trustees would have to face election again on Tuesday. The seat held by John Ortega, who replaced Aschoff, is not due for an election until 2003.

The recent rhetoric was reminiscent of the June campaign, with members of the former majority accusing the teachers union of subverting the district in an attempt to take over the board and hike pay. Their critics accused the old board of ostracizing teachers and parents by ignoring their pleas at board meetings.

The new majority candidates raised far more money than their counterparts. Moffat, Smith, Nichols and Ledesma collected more than $125,000 in campaign contributions against the less than $21,000 raised by the members of the former majority.

“One side had the passion and the money and the other side didn’t,” said Fred Smoller, a political science professor at Chapman University and a supporter of the new majority.

The voters seemed ready for some calm after years of dissent.

The previous board “had kind of a head-in-the-sand mentality,” said Rudy Ohrt, 32, as he voted with his wife, Toni Thomas, 34, at the West Orange Elementary School. “They were more preoccupied with legislating morality than running the schools.”

The couple moved from Newport Beach last year and said they worry about the future education of their 1-year-old daughter, Catherine.

“I think the new board is keeping the teachers happy,” Thomas said.

But Rick Weber, 35, who voted shortly after Ohrt and Thomas, had a different take.

“Although my kids are not in public school,” said Weber, “I think the district is headed in the wrong direction by putting more power into the hands of the unions.”

The new board faces more challenges in the near future, , including nearly a dozen pending lawsuits, a dispute over its finances and an ongoing grand jury probe into alleged violations by the recall volunteers in June.

However, Moffat said the new majority has worked hard to create an atmosphere of cooperation in the district.

“We know we are a good working team,” she said. “We will be able to focus on the business of the district and less on peripheral issues.”