Recalls Leave Community Splintered

This is a school district in upheaval: The superintendent has been fired. The interim superintendent was asked not to return next fall. Its schools rank among the lowest in the state. One board member never went to school.

Now, all five board members are facing recall attempts amid allegations of racism, incompetence and vendettas.

All this in a town of just two square miles.

Though Farmersville has seen its share of divisive politics in the past, residents say nothing compares to this.

“This is the dirtiest I’ve ever seen it,” said City Councilman Derek Ferguson. “This has had a terrible effect on the town. Everything positive that has been achieved in this town has been negated.”

The dispute focuses on a new Latino school board majority, elected on a platform that they are the best representation of the district’s ethnic makeup. They say that low-income students are being ignored and that little is being done to boost test scores.

Opponents say, however, that those school board members are using their positions to place more Latinos in powerful jobs while removing other longtime district employees.

It all started in November, when candidates challenged two incumbents in bitter campaigns to oversee the district’s four schools and $20-million budget. In the end, voters deposed two longtime white school board trustees and replaced them with Latinos.

But that was just schoolyard antics compared to what came next. The tumultuous events that have erupted over the past six months in Farmersville -- population 8,737 -- are far from simple.

Days after the election, opponents said the newly elected members were out to form a destructive cabal. Their theory was that the new members would join with two fellow Latino officials already on the five-member volunteer board and vote as a bloc. These trustees had a hit list against all those who campaigned against them, the opponents said, and they were out to sweep away their opposition.

“They call me the puppet master,” said recently elected board President Martin Macareno, who is at the center of the controversy. “It’s ridiculous what has been said out there. There is no vendetta; there’s never been a vendetta. Everything has been created.”

Macareno and his colleagues have fired back with charges of racism, saying the established white community refuses to accept that it has lost the reins to the first predominantly Latino school board in the town’s history.

Then came what their opponents say was the proof: The board suspended and eventually fired longtime Supt. Janet Jones, saying she abused her position to campaign for the incumbents. Her contract, which was set to end in a year, was terminated.

There would be no more room for compromise. A recall campaign was launched in January. And then another. And another.

Macareno was elected in November. Supporters call him the savior of the 2,500-student district.

The two allied board members he joined -- Antonio Ramos and Conrado Gonzalez -- are scheduled to face a recall election in August. Their opponents are close to collecting enough signatures to force a recall vote on Macareno and newly elected trustee Blanca Sandoval.

Both recall campaigns are being organized by supporters of Jones who say that ousting the eight-year district leader was an attempt at total control.

“The board is doing whatever they want right now,” said Kathy Hopper, who has led the two recall campaigns. “Martin [Macareno] has free rein.”

Hopper and her allies say the reason for Jones’ dismissal -- campaigning for the incumbents during school hours -- is just an excuse to phase out Macareno’s opponents.

Residents who support the four targeted members -- Macareno, Sandoval, Ramos and Gonzalez -- are fueling their own recall drive against veteran trustee John Vasquez, the fifth board member. They say they would not be mounting a campaign if their opponents had not stooped to recall efforts.

“Had they not done that, we would’ve never done it,” said Linda Burns, who is active in the Vasquez recall effort. “We would have waited until election time again. But when they did all this, it made us have to take a look at this.”

The recalls are just part of the drama that residents say they have been dealing with over the last few months. Some say the paranoia and petty politics have ripped this predominantly poor farm community apart.

When Jones visited Hopper at her home, a photo was taken of her car and put up in the post office. A private investigator was hired by Gonzalez’s opponents to follow him after suspicions arose that he was living with his girlfriend outside town. And school board meetings can be so volatile that Macareno needs a police escort.

“The whole system is suffering from this,” said Phil Brown, the Tulare County representative of the California Teachers Assn. “The distractions are too much. The teachers are constantly in discussion of this issue. It’s devastating, as far as getting your job done” is concerned.

Brown said the four recall targets’ educational credentials and their lack of fluency in English were further reasons for removing them.

“In today’s environment, everyone has standards,” he said. “No one is setting the base for the minimum qualifications of a board member. These are multimillion-dollar businesses. The board has a fiscal responsibility to understand the nature of the budget. They need an understanding of the basic structure.”

But the four trustees and their supporters say there is no vendetta, no hidden agenda and no relevance in highlighting someone’s lack of education or difficulty in communicating.

“Does that mean you don’t have a right to represent the community?” Macareno asked. “We’re completely connected to the community.”

Macareno, who held a position on the board in 1997 but stepped down to lead an unsuccessful recall campaign against other board members, said he ran for the position because “the Farmersville children need a better education.”

“They need to learn how to read and how to speak English,” he said. “We have a responsibility to the community.”

Macareno said he had never been given the chance to prove himself.

“I heard the word ‘recall’ from the day we were elected,” he said. “We still feel like we’re the outsiders.”

Over the last three years, the predominantly Latino constituency has voiced its opposition to the status quo, other members said, and change is inevitable.

“Better a Mexican running the school board since we’re the majority,” his colleague, Ramos, said in Spanish. He was elected in 2001 and does not have a high school diploma. “If they put their racism aside, they would see that the majority of this community are farmworkers.”

Ramos can relate to those workers. The Mexican native arrived in Farmersville when he was 13 and never went to school, working instead in neighboring fields for two decades. His rugged hands still tell that story. If they sometimes have the faint aroma of gasoline, it’s because Ramos escaped the hard field labor to open a mechanic’s shop.

Most of the other school board members have similar stories. Sandoval was born in El Paso to a strict, conservative father. He forbade his children to attend school for fear of drugs and sex. It was not until she was 17, and her neighbors reported her parents to authorities, that she was given the freedom to start learning English. She earned her GED six years later, and now owns a beauty shop.

“I have seen people who have got their high school diploma, and they don’t even know how to read,” Sandoval said. “During the years, I have seen the necessity that we have everywhere. If we put our part in helping kids, that would be good.”

And Ramos, who studied to be an architect in Mexico before arriving in 1985, said opponents were tarring his name by revealing the details of his divorce.

“My personal life is something everyone should respect,” he said in Spanish. “I feel a little disrespected as a person. They shouldn’t be doing this. I’m not the only person to divorce.”

On Saturday, hundreds of volunteers -- teachers, residents and union members from across the state -- marched the narrow, dusty streets of Farmersville seeking signatures to qualify a recall vote on Sandoval and Macareno for the ballot.

Meanwhile, opponents of the four allied trustees are considering whether to start yet another petition drive -- to override the board’s decision to fire Jones and her deputy under a section of the California Education Code.

Until then, the search is on for who will take those jobs.