Trustees to Revisit Pacts Worth Millions

A priority for Santa Ana’s school board, which meets tonight for the first time since an acrimonious Feb. 4 recall election, will be to review millions of dollars in contracts awarded by ousted trustee Nativo V. Lopez and his board allies.

The review is prompted in large part by Santa Ana Unified Supt. Al Mijares’ recent allegations that Lopez and trustee John Palacio pushed for the hiring of certain firms, micromanaged projects and shielded contractors from criticism by district staff.

“The way that we’ve been doing business must change immediately,” said trustee Audrey Y. Noji, a critic of Lopez who was elected in November.

“Board members must assume their appropriate roles and not order staff around.”

The county registrar of voters certified election results Monday, clearing the way for newly elected trustee Rob Richardson to be sworn in tonight.

The tally was 69.3% of voters favoring Lopez’s removal. Richardson got 64.5% of the votes among four candidates vying for the seat.

Lopez has denied any impropriety. He has countered that it was Mijares and his schools construction team who tried to hide their own shortcomings by blaming contractors.

Any change in contracts could be fraught with legal land mines. The overcrowded district already has spent more than $100 million in school construction funds generated by Measure C, a 1999 bond measure passed by Santa Ana voters, although no new schools have been built.

Several community leaders and residents who led the recall campaign insist that an examination is necessary to restore integrity to the district.

“I want to see where the red flags are,” said Alfredo Amezcua, an attorney and member of a citizens panel created to monitor Measure C expenditures.

Two days before last week’s recall election, the superintendent charged that Lopez and Palacio committed “horrific ethical violations” while protecting a consultant hired to manage the schools construction plan. Mijares said Los Angeles-based Del Terra Construction Group was too inexperienced to oversee the $300-million-plus endeavor.

Palacio could not be reached for comment Monday but has said that it was staff incompetence and a lack of vision on Mijares’ part that prompted him to get more closely involved. Del Terra president Luis Rojas did not return a call Monday seeking comment. He has previously defended his company’s performance.

Before Measure C passed, voters were told that $145 million in bonds, coupled with state matching funds, would yield 11 new elementary schools and two high schools in the jam-packed 61,000-student district.

District officials now project only three new high schools and two elementary schools. But expansions at several existing schools, they said, should add about the same number of new classrooms.

The scarcity of undeveloped land in Santa Ana and higher construction costs have hurt district plans, but more than three years later, the district has yet to lay bricks for any new school.

Construction is scheduled to begin in less than a month on the controversial Lorin Griset Elementary School. Richardson said he wants to review the proposal because he doesn’t believe the site is the best one for a new campus. It is unclear whether he has the votes to derail the project.

That site, in a relatively affluent neighborhood in the northern part of town, was one of the most contested issues in the Lopez recall campaign. Some area residents said the school should be built in a more densely populated part of the heavily Latino, predominantly poor district, where there is greater need. Lopez, an immigrants’ rights activist, and his supporters charged that the opposing residents were motivated by prejudice.

Trustee Noji and district officials say the issues facing them go beyond the Griset campus or bilingual education, another hotly debated topic of the recall campaign.

The previously silent Mijares made serious charges about the board’s past actions that must be aired, Noji and others say.

Two days before the election, Mijares detailed what he called the last example in a pattern of meddling by board members regarding contractors.

Mijares said current board President Sal Tinajero, who has often voted with Lopez and Palacio on the five-member board, demanded last month that the superintendent include an agenda item for a special board meeting. In that meeting, trustees were to be asked to vote on the purchase of an adult education software system from a Seattle company.

The software, which was to cost $375,500, had not been fully developed, Mijares said. Lopez had brought company owner Gary H. Andersen to meet staff members, Mijares said.

Andersen later contributed $5,000 to a political action committee that donated to Palacio’s reelection campaign in November, according to public records.

Mijares said he refused to include the item. Tinajero and Lopez denied they pressured Mijares and said buying educational material is a legitimate matter for board discussion.

Tinajero and Palacio, the current clerk, are expected to be replaced as board officers tonight.

Noji, an Asian American, said she fears that the public will see any changes on the board along ethnic lines. Tinajero and Palacio are Latino. Richardson is white. Trustee Rosemarie Avila is a Guatemalan native of German descent.

“I would caution people from being too quick to judge what this school board is doing just by the complexion of those sitting on the board,” Noji said.