Education Appointee Rejects Second Term

Carlton J. Jenkins, one of Gov. Gray Davis’ earliest appointees to the state Board of Education, rejected a second four-year term this week, a day before his scheduled confirmation hearing in the Senate.

Jenkins, an investment executive who founded the first African American-owned commercial bank in Los Angeles, resigned from the board Tuesday. The unpublicized move caught both Davis’ office and the Senate by surprise and created a fourth vacancy on the 10-member board.

Jenkins said in an interview Friday that he could no longer satisfy the time-consuming demands of the education board along with those of his investment-fund employer and still give his teenage daughter the attention she deserved. The board meets two days each month.

Among the first of Davis’ appointees when the governor took office in 1999, Jenkins’ first four-year term expired last year. Davis reappointed Jenkins, who has served the maximum one year that appointees can serve without Senate confirmation.

His confirmation hearing by the Rules Committee was scheduled for Wednesday. But on Tuesday afternoon Jenkins notified the governor’s office and committee that he had decided not to serve another term.

He said he considered it more appropriate to withdraw “than to be reappointed and then have to resign midway through the process.”

The competing demands of his job and those of the board had started to “impinge on my ability to be the kind of member I wanted to be,” Jenkins said.

He said members must spend at least two days preparing for the complex educational issues that confront the board at its monthly meetings. Unlike other gubernatorial appointees who are independently wealthy, “I’m one of the few guys who actually has a job” and depends on its income.

Jenkins is a partner in the Yucaipa Corporate Initiative Fund, which provides equity capital to businesses owned by women and minorities in disadvantaged communities around the country.

He has served as chairman, executive officer and president of Founders National Bank in Los Angeles and was a founder of Dryades Savings Bank.